A Novel About Elizabeth Siddal

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2013-09-13 Not as She is: A Novel About Elizabeth Siddal

Ursuliak, Emily

Ursuliak, E. (2013). Not as She is: A Novel About Elizabeth Siddal (Unpublished master's thesis). University of Calgary, Calgary, AB. doi:10.11575/PRISM/27128 http://hdl.handle.net/11023/952 master thesis

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Not as She is: A Novel About Elizabeth Siddal

Emily Ursuliak

A THESIS

SUBMITTED TO THE FACULTY OF GRADUATE STUDIES

IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE

DEGREE OF MASTER OF ARTS

DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH

CALGARY, ALBERTA

SEPTEMBER, 2013

This novel follows in the feminist tradition of reclaiming female artists who have been overlooked, or misrepresented. Not as She is centers around Elizabeth Siddal, a Victorian-era artist, known for her connections with the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood (PRB), but also a worthy artist in her own right. Siddal is often viewed by traditional art historians as a hysterical, laudanum-addicted muse, but the fictional representation of her life found in this novel provides a more complex account. By using first person and second person points of view in present tense, the reader is given a more vivid version of Siddal as she struggles with her addiction to laudanum, becomes absorbed in the process of creating art and lives her daily life.

ii Acknowledgments

There are many people who have supported me throughout the writing of this thesis.

Firstly, I would like to thank Suzette Mayr: I couldn’t ask for a better supervisor, she is an excellent mentor who has helped me grow into a stronger writer. The entire writing community of Calgary has been like a supportive family to me since I moved here two years ago: I love you all! I’m lucky to have my parents Linda and Grant Ursuliak who always have my back and have never been concerned that their daughter is a writer, and of course Tim Ursuliak, the best brother one could have. Rod Schumacher was my first creative writing professor and without his encouragement I probably wouldn’t have gone on to pursue my MA in the first place. Lots of gratitude goes out to the friends who have had to listen to me ramble on about the Pre-

Raphaelites long before I ever started this thesis. I’m appreciative of the Social Sciences and

Humanities Research Council for providing the grant that supported this project. I’m grateful to

Linda Carreiro and Stefania Forlini for agreeing to be on my defense committee. I’d like to give one last thank you to Professor James Trevelyan at Red Deer College: it was in his art history class many years ago that I was first introduced to Elizabeth Siddal.

iii Table of Contents

Abstract ...... ii Acknowledgments ...... iii Table of Contents ...... iv

Introductory Essay: Not as She is: Elizabeth Siddal Reclaimed in Fiction ...... 1

Creative Manuscript: Not as She is ...... 23

iv INTRODUCTION

Not as She is: Elizabeth Siddal Reclaimed in Fiction

Elizabeth Eleanor Siddal has long held a fascination for art lovers, from her fans in 1928 who were known as the “Siddalites” of Sheffield, to the modern-day website run by Stephanie

Piña devoted entirely to Siddal at www.lizziesiddal.com (Marsh 73). Siddal was an artist’s model for the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood (also known as the PRB), a group of Victorian artists who sought to counter the artistic conventions of the time and capture more realistic interpretations of life in their paintings.

The standard narrative of Siddal’s life that one encounters on first reading about her is that she was discovered by Walter Deverell, a friend of the PRB, at the millinery shop where she worked. Deverell began using her as a model and told the PRB about her, who began employing her as well. Dante Gabriel Rossetti, one of the founders of the PRB, took a romantic interest in her and insisted that she model only for him. They lived together on and off for several years, but did not marry until nearly ten years after they met. According to correspondence between

Rossetti and his family, the marriage occurred because Siddal was close to dying and he felt guilty about his lack of faithfulness to her (Marsh 62-3). During her relationship with Rossetti she developed an illness that was never conclusively diagnosed by doctors; she struggled with eating, sleeping and suffered from bouts of depression and anxiety. It was suggested that Siddal take laudanum for her afflictions, which she became addicted to and which had a very negative effect on her health. A year after their marriage Siddal delivered a stillborn baby and this

1 traumatic event was detrimental to her mental health and thus increased her dependence on laudanum, which eventually led to her death by laudanum overdose.

Much of what we know about Siddal historically has been framed by the male artists she spent time with as well as the male biographers who captured her within their books about her husband, Rossetti. Other than her death certificate, the earliest official document that refers to her is the obituary written for Rossetti by Theodore Watts Duncan and F. G. Stephens in 1882 in which we are told that “In the spring of 1860 he married Elizabeth Eleanor Siddall, who being very beautiful, was constantly drawn and painted by him. She had one stillborn child in 1861 and died in February 1862” (qtd. in Marsh 17). From this sparse account of her life, published anecdotes of her life with Rossetti slowly began to be fleshed out, sometimes with erroneous information, such as William Sharp’s biography which inserts Siddal into the Rossetti narrative in 1860 when “he brought home his wife Elizabeth Eleanor Siddall . . . who was very beautiful and showed brilliant promise as a colourist” (qtd. in Marsh 19). Sharp fails to realize that in fact

Siddal was known to Rossetti far earlier than 1860, since she began modeling for Walter

Deverell in 1849. Siddal is not mentioned as a model until Joseph Knight’s biography of

Rossetti which tells us that “She had not been with him long before he recognized in her a strong aptitude for art . . . [T]he position of model was soon associated with that of student” (qtd. in

Marsh 35). The unconventional nature of Siddal and Rossetti’s relationship was finally documented in William Bell Scott’s scandalous memoir Autobiographical Notes of the Life of

William Bell Scott, and Notices of his Artistic and Poetic Circle of Friends 1830 to 1882 published in 1892. Scott had early associations with the PRB, but was never an official member, which may have caused some bitterness on his end and fueled his desire to portray Rossetti and

2 Siddal’s out-of-wedlock relationship as unseemly. He tells of an encounter he had with Siddal when he made an unexpected visit at the Hermitage, a house Rossetti was looking after for some friends: “I found myself in the romantic dusk of the apartment face to face with Rossetti and a lady whom I did not recognize and could scarcely see. He did not introduce her; she rose to go . . . . This was Miss Siddal” (qtd. in Marsh 39). With so many eager to write about Rossetti and potentially damage his reputation, his brother William took on the authoritative role as his official biographer. He published three articles on Rossetti in the Art Journal in 1884 and later in

1886 published The Collected Works of Dante Gabriel Rossetti (Marsh 34). William Rossetti is often seen as “[t]he chief narrator of Elizabeth Siddal’s story . . . who in the course of twenty years produced the accounts on which knowledge of her life was based” (34). As a brother to

Dante Gabriel Rossetti, William did not occupy a very objective viewpoint. While he strove to be accurate, he also needed to protect the dignity of both his family and his brother. Being too honest about Dante’s unconventional lifestyle might have made William come across as harsh and disloyal and so Dante’s relationship with Elizabeth Siddal is treated hesitantly within the biography. William gives no explanation for the unusually long, what he terms “engagement,” between Siddal and Rossetti, and while he strives to capture a description of her he also says, “I hardly think that I ever heard her say a single thing indicative of her own character or her own underlying thought . . . . It was like the speech of a person who wanted to turn off the conversation” (qtd. in Marsh 46). William’s reflection on Siddal shows that he and Siddal were not close and that she largely remained a mystery to him, which is troublesome considering that his account of her is what has largely shaped the way historians and pop culture see her.

3 What fascinates me about the narrative of Siddal is what can be found beneath the surface story of her life presented by William Rossetti and other biographers. It is not often stressed, for instance, that Siddal was an artist in her own right, producing both poetry and visual art. Some of her paintings were exhibited in her lifetime with the work of the PRB in both England and abroad in America. Siddal’s accomplishments as an artist are often overlooked because her story is largely overshadowed by Rossetti’s. Rossetti can be credited with preserving Siddal’s work because “In 1866 he arranged for her surviving drawings and sketches to be photographed, printed, and pasted into folio volumes as a memorial of her art” (13). However, his role as her mentor has often led to many art historians claiming that much of her work either copied his style, or that the more successful sections of her paintings may have actually been painted by him instead. Traditional art historians had difficulty seeing Siddal as an artist in her own right because as feminist art historian Griselda Pollock suggests “‘creativity’ is an exclusively masculine prerogative . . . the term artist automatically refers to a man” (29) and also due to the fact that women were meant to be, as feminist scholar Adrienne Rich says “a luxury for man . . . the painter’s model and the poet’s muse” (19). Men, in response to the female artist, were supposed to enact a kind of “male judgement, along with the active discouragement and thwarting of her needs” (Rich 20). Instead, history suggests that Rossetti sought to support

Siddal artistically; he was even responsible for her meeting with John Ruskin, who became

Siddal’s patron (Marsh 38, 53). This is not to say that Rossetti was not controlling or repressive in his relationship with Siddal. It is because of Rossetti, for example, that the more recognized spelling of Siddal’s name is with one “l” instead of two as in “Siddall,” the spelling of her actual birth name. Rossetti and other PRB members were known for finding working class women and

4 then striving to improve them and Rossetti managed to convince Siddal that “‘Siddal’ looked more genteel than ‘Siddall,’ so Lizzie changed it permanently” (Hawksley 32). As both mentor and lover Rossetti had a very strong influence over Siddal, renaming her and shaping her as an artist.

My interest in interpreting Siddal’s life in fiction is bound up with the tradition of the feminist reclaiming of female artists, and so it was important to study the academic work that has already been produced around reclaiming Elizabeth Siddal. Lucinda Hawksley’s book, Lizzie

Siddal: The Tragedy of a Pre-Raphaelite Supermodel, allows Siddal to have a biography where she is the central focus instead of a counterpart to the narrative of the Pre-Raphaelite

Brotherhood. Jan Marsh’s The Legend of Elizabeth Siddal goes beyond a simple biography to study changing perceptions of Siddal as a historical figure and the way that popular culture and traditional art history have imagined her. Griselda Pollock discusses historical differences between male and female artists, and in “Woman as Sign in Pre-Raphaelite Literature,” an essay she co-wrote with Deborah Cherry, she focuses this discussion specifically on Elizabeth Siddal: the challenges Siddal would have had to overcome as a female artist, and the ways in which she was a transgressive figure within Victorian society. The work of Hawksley, Marsh and Pollock as well as other feminist theorists dealing with similar issues, provide a framework for the reclaiming work I did within my work of fiction on Siddal.

When grappling with the theoretical framework for examining Siddal’s life, I felt that a blend of second wave and third wave feminism was necessary. The idea of “reclaiming” Siddal, very much a second wave feminist notion, is work that clearly needs to be continued since so many misconceptions around Siddal still exist. Pollock, in the first chapter of Vision and

5 Difference asks “[i]s adding women to art history the same as producing feminist art history?” (1). She mentions that this is what early feminists strove to do, but as they “[t]hought about women artists in terms of art history’s typical procedures and protocols . . . [i]t soon became clear that this would be a straightjacket in which our studies of women artists would reproduce and secure the normative status of men artists and men’s art” (2). Pollock argues that we need to reframe art history in such a way that women’s art can be included, but on its own terms, and that doing so involves investigating the social environments in which different female artists lived because, as she says, “art-making is dependent on favorable social and cultural conditions. Women as artists had unfavourable conditions” (48). In Not as She is I examine the unfavourable conditions that I believe worked against Siddal during her development as an artist.

Siddal wasn’t able to study at the Academy as a student, which meant she was dependent on

Rossetti for her art education, and his tendency to balk at the technical skills taught by the

Academy meant that his instruction was not very focused or rigorous. The third wave influence in the novel comes from the movement advocating “working with the particular differences that constitute women’s positions at the local level, inviting the expression of hybrid identities” (Budgeon 5). Third wave feminism, while still very much in the process of being defined, leans more towards a personal female experience instead of a more generalized one and invites the kind of explorations of identity that I have taken on in my novel, where Siddal’s sense of who she is is not fixed but fluid, and prone to fracturing under the struggle of defining herself as an artist at that time.

The title of my novel Not as She is comes from Christina Rossetti’s poem “In An Artist’s

Studio:” “Not as she is, but as she fills his dream” (Marsh 57). Although it has never been

6 verified, many historians believe that in this poem Christina Rossetti is reflecting upon her brother Dante’s studio, and the many representations of Siddal hung on its walls. Christina

Rossetti’s poem suggests a disconnect in the relationship between her brother and Siddal. He paints an idealized version of Siddal, not the real woman, and is incapable, or unwilling to come to terms with who the real woman is. I feel that the general public and traditional art historians have a similar bias when they discuss Siddal, only instead of idealizing her they wish to sensationalize her story. The title of the novel not only gestures towards Rossetti’s alienation towards Siddal, and the cartoonish way she has been represented by traditional art historians, but also my struggle to pin down the identity of Siddal. I want to express how Siddal defies gender norms for women in the Victorian period. I am also interested in how one might capture in fiction the disturbed psychological states Siddal occasionally enters throughout the text when she is either under the influence of laudanum or under emotional duress as a result of the moments when she challenges Victorian society’s expectations of her gender. The choices I make around the point of the view of the narrative are the best way of approaching this challenge. The text consists of a linear first person narrative that is disrupted by non-chronological, second-person scenes which depict Siddal under the influence of laudanum or in an emotionally disturbed state.

I also seek to portray the more mundane moments normally left out of Siddal’s narrative, the time spent with her family, or at her job at the millinery shop and have chosen to subvert the traditional “beginning” of Siddal’s story.

The narrative of Elizabeth Siddal’s life in historical accounts nearly always begins with the point at which her life intersected with that of Walter Deverell. The myth that begins around

7 Deverell’s first encounter with Siddal springs from F. G. Stephens’ authorized account of Dante

Gabriel Rossetti from 1894 (Marsh 41). Stephens recounts this supposed first sighting of Siddal:

Some time in 1850 Walter Deverell, going with his mother to a then renowned

bonnet-maker’s establishment in Cranbourne Street (then called an ‘alley’) . . . happened

in his boyish and restless mood to glance wearily along the counter to where, in the

background of the shop a group of assistants could be seen . . . . Among these damsels sat

one conspicuous by a rare sort of comeliness . . . . (Marsh 41)

It is this origin myth, embroidered on over the years, that constitutes the familiar story of

Siddal’s emergence into the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. Variations on Stephens’s account are found in nearly every mention of Siddal’s life. Despite the authority that Stephens’ origin tale of

Elizabeth Siddal has seemed to gain over the years, there is in fact little evidence that his version is the truth. Little is known about the part Walter Deverell’s mother might have played in the interaction with Siddal, nor could the story be corroborated by Walter or his mother since both would have been long dead by the time Stephens was working on his biography of Rossetti

(Marsh 42). The information also could not have come from the Rossettis since William Rossetti seems to have included this information in his biography on his brother after he read it in

Stephens’ biography (Marsh 42).

What is troubling about the way Siddal’s narrative traditionally begins is not only that the information may not be historically accurate, but that beginning Siddal’s narrative here suggests that she has no narrative outside of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, that she comes into existence only after they have discovered her. Pollock and Cherry, in their article “Woman as

8 the notion of imperialist dominance: “We are told that Siddall was ‘discovered’ one day in 1850; the term ‘discovered’ is redolent of those imperialist enterprises in which the existence of a people or a country is acknowledged only when seen in a colonial relation to the master race, class, gender” (132). By framing Siddal’s narrative with her “discovery” by Deverell she becomes dependent on his intervention within her life and remains reliant on him and the members of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood for development and recognition as an artist.

Although the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood still remains a dominant force in the recounting of Siddal’s life, academics such as Jan Marsh and Griselda Pollock have worked to expose Siddal as an artist in her own right, and create discussion about her life that lies outside of the influence of the Brotherhood. It is Marsh’s speculation about how she believes Siddal was introduced to

Deverell that was of most interest to me when engaging in a fictional recreation of this scene.

Marsh disputes the fact that Siddal would have been asked to model for Deverell in the shop she was working in, rather “[it] is indeed more likely that, in whatever capacity, she called upon Mrs.

Deverell at home - in 1850 middle-class women seldom bought ready-made clothes or bonnets - and this was how she first met Walter” (159). My fictionalization of this scene refers to

Stephens’ account by having Deverell first spot Siddal at the milliner’s shop, but not formally introduce himself to her until it is arranged that she deliver a bonnet to his family’s home.

Marsh’s new interpretation of the “discovery” of Siddal springs from an unpublished obituary written by William Ibbitt, a friend of Siddal’s, which provides a new angle on the story

(Marsh 157-158). A resident of Sheffield, the birthplace of Siddal’s father, Ibbitt’s obituary provides not only a different approach to the “discovery” of Siddal, but also support for the idea that she was already interested in becoming an artist before meeting her mentor and husband

9 Rossetti. Ibbitt writes that “Miss Siddall showed some outlines, designs of her own leisure hours, to the eldest Mr. D — and he, much pleased with them, introduced them to Mr. D — Jnr and the other young artists” (qtd. in Marsh 157). At this time “designs” would have referred to sketches that Siddal supposedly showed to Deverell’s father, who was himself the administrative head at the School of Design (160). I echo this information in my novel by having Siddal bring her sketches to her first meeting with Deverell, however I’ve simplified the narrative by cutting out the interaction mentioned with Deverell’s father.

In order to undercut the dominance of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood in Siddal’s story I utilize the new information Marsh has brought to light and begin Siddal’s narrative before the scene of her “discovery” to show that she desires to be an artist long before she encounters

Deverell or Rossetti. The novel does begin with a second-person flash forward or prolepsis to her modeling for John Everett Millais’s Ophelia, the painting in which she’s most known for her image, but the linear thrust of the novel begins with Siddal sketching women she sees on the streets, working on her drawings with a pencil stub stolen from her father’s workroom in the early hours of the morning in a room she shares with her younger sister Lydia. Beginning the linear action of the story this way destabilizes the entrenched plot-line of Siddal’s life and prepares the reader for a new approach.

In order to contribute something unique to the fictional reclaiming of Siddal as a historical female artist it was important for me to dissect the other fictional representations of her life. I studied White Rose and the Red by H.D., The Golden Veil by Paddy Kitchen, Victorian

Love Story by Nerina Shute, Angel with Bright Hair by Paula Batchelor, and Hide Me Among the

Graves by Tim Powers.

10 H.D.’s White Rose and the Red was written in 1948, but was not published until Alison

Halsall took on the work of editing it and publishing it in 2009. In her introduction, Halsall describes H.D.’s approach to tackling the subject of Siddal as “the dismantling of a masculinist

Pre-Raphaelite cult of beauty, which she achieves by deploying Siddall as the epistemological center of the narrative” (xix). She explains the reasons it was not previously published by noting

“its elusive narration; its destabilization of teleological narrative movement through an emphasis given to vision, trance, and thought transferences; and the difficulties experienced by readers in categorizing it” (xix). Siddal’s traditional narrative is also destabilized because H.D. has chosen to begin the story with Siddal returning home to discuss moving in with Rossetti, which occurs much later in the timeline of Siddal’s life. H.D.’s emphasis on filling in Siddal’s home life with her family is also essential, since these more mundane moments of her life are often left out of her traditional narrative. This attention to her relationships with her family members is something I carry forward into my own work, albeit in different ways. I place most of my focus on Siddal’s relationship with her sister Lydia, or “Lyddy” as I call her within my text, with the parents acting more as background figures, while in H.D.’s version there are more interactions with the parents and more discussion of Siddal’s brother Harry, whom I have left out altogether.

What was of most interest to me in White Rose and the Red is the way in which H.D. chooses to portray Siddal as an artist, and as a strong, independent woman. In other words, what sort of reclaiming work does H.D. undertake within her novel? Halsall claims that “H.D. emphasizes Siddal’s multiple perspectives, her complicated, elusive, and allusive thought processes and her penchant for seeing . . . to demonstrate her complexity, a complexity largely lost in the rigid versions of Siddal that proliferate in art and criticism” (117). H.D. creates this

11 complexity by filling in and subverting Siddal’s traditional narrative with unique and unusual details. For instance, when Siddal thinks about her time working at Mrs. Tozier’s shop she reflects on what made her such an invaluable worker to Mrs. Tozier: “Dad knew (or perhaps he didn’t) how his teaching her to keep the books for him and checking up on the accounts, had really given her her place there; Dad said she was good at numbers” (15). H.D. creates a close bond between Siddal and her father and has her fictional version of Siddal learn accounting skills from him so she can help him with his accounts, as well as Mrs. Tozier’s, a skill which would have probably been unusual for women of that time. H.D. also includes a number of scenes in which Siddal reflects not only on her sketches and paintings, but also her writing:

She read the stories and thought of her own Gold Cord, which she had not

finished. Mr. Morris said that his stories were patterned on Hand and Soul; she

remembered Chiaro and the glass before the Lady; it held a lily and a rose. She had made

a sketch of it but it needed colour. Mr. Morris had asked to see her drawings. He said,

Gabriel had told him that she was doing some illuminated lettering for Hand and Soul.

(165)

This depiction of Siddal as an artist shows her interacting with both Gabriel (Dante Gabriel

Rossetti) and Mr. Morris (William Morris) as intellectual equals. She and Mr. Morris have discussions about their writing and what influences them, and he also wishes to see some of her work. Gabriel has discussed Siddal’s work with Mr. Morris, an act that seems to suggest he deems her work worthy of discussion with one of the fellow members of the PRB.

Although H.D. has several scenes in which Siddal is contemplating or planning out creative work she would like to do, there are no scenes in which we actually see her painting or

12 sketching and get a first-hand account of her creating a work of art. This is something I felt was important to include within my own work, to not only show her contemplating her art, but capture her mind in the midst of creating art. Capturing Siddal in the midst of creating is a more active way of demonstrating a woman who wishes to move past simply being a muse to fully realizing her potential as an artist.

Another area which H.D. does not take full advantage of if she wished to portray Siddal growing as an artist is the scenes in which Siddal acts a model for the PRB. She compresses almost the entirety of Siddal’s modeling experiences into one paragraph and the language with which she describes this experience is very bland and passive. Of her infamous experience posing for Millais’ Ophelia Siddal thinks that “She had been happy about the Ophelia until he did the floating draperies. She didn’t see why she had to be submerged with them. But she had so admired his work that she wanted to be helpful” (167). Siddal’s role as the model for Ophelia is well known since she became quite ill after nearly freezing to death when the water in the bathtub she had to float in for the pose became too cold. Having Siddal experience this moment in the present would have made for a much more visceral experience and allowed H.D. to tackle the issue of the female artist as a model who “sees her experience . . . in terms of the feminine position, that is, as the object of the look. But she must also account for the feeling she experiences as an artist, occupying what could be called the masculine position, as subject of the look” (Kelly 123). By providing scenes with Siddal in the role of either artist or model the reader would be able to compare and contrast the sense of power Siddal gains when she leaves her role as the objectified model and becomes the artist. Instead of embracing this opportunity to show

Siddal’s struggle as a female artist dealing with the ways in which she is objectified as a model,

13 she discusses her work in a very passive way, saying she is happy to pose in the tub because she wants to be helpful and because she admires Millais’ work. There is no mention of how modeling affected her as a female artist, something that would have been very important to her early development in her visual work.

Paddy Kitchen’s The Golden Veil is another fictional representation of Siddal which strives to capture a more realistic account of her. The story begins with Siddal’s encounter with

Mr. Greenacre, a greengrocer who interacted with Siddal’s family and was later found guilty of murdering and mutilating the body of his fiancée. While it is promising that Kitchen begins the narrative when Siddal is younger and hasn’t yet met the PRB, she inscribes Siddal’s interaction with Greenacre with melodrama: he picks her up to carry her over a puddle with the bloody bag of his fiancee’s remains in his other hand. Kitchen’s Siddal returns home to her mother with blood from the murdered woman on her face.

Kitchen’s novel stands out in its attempts to more realistically portray Siddal’s addiction to laudanum, even including a scene in which Siddal has to receive an enema due to one of the side-effects of laudanum use: constipation. Despite including this honest depiction of the very real physical effects laudanum would have had on Siddal, Kitchen seems unwilling to fully explore the way it would have affected Siddal’s mind. She mentions the nightmares that result from the addiction as Siddal is “hurled through dark and terrifying scenes before her mind finally became too drugged even to dream” but she seems unwilling to explore what those terrifying scenes are (244).

Siddal’s work as an artist is also mentioned but in a manner as equally vague as her troubled dreams. Kitchen seems hesitant to get too close to her fictional representation of Siddal

14 and has chosen the third person point of view in order to maintain this barrier between her and her character. She has also chosen to write the story in past tense, further separating the reader from the action and the mind of the character.

Both Nerina Shute and Paula Batchelor’s novels about Siddal feed into the melodramatic, oversimplified versions of Siddal so often recounted by more traditional art historians and neither book does much to reclaim her as a female artist besides mentioning her painting, which is often done in passing as though it is merely a hobby for her. Batchelor seems eager to portray

Siddal as a raving lunatic, feeding into Gilbert and Gubar’s assertion that female artists are often oppressed by being portrayed as “maddened or grotesque” figures who, when “they make sounds they are for the most part, say patriarchal theorists, absurd or grotesque or pitiful” (43). In

Batchelor’s novel Siddal defends herself by becoming hysterical, at one point saying to Rossetti

“ ‘I’ll make sure you’re as sorry that I’m dead as you’re sorry I’m living now!’ This was spoken, shouted into his ear with wild, insane malevolence” (168). Although Batchelor has presented reasonable motivations for Siddal to become upset, she undermines her character when she describes her “wild, insane malevolence.” Shute’s novel seems unable to escape describing

Siddal in the way that Bronfen states Rossetti’s work depicts her: “as a beautiful figure of melancholia, of feminine beauty signed by death, in the liminality between life and death” (170).

Shute describes Siddal in a way that glorifies her illness and makes it seem as though it adds to her physical beauty: “Her beauty was greater than before. The ailing Miss Sid seemed to droop beneath the weight of her shining hair, like a pale slave with a burden of gold upon her head” (71). In this scene Siddal is described as a “slave” weighed down by her hair as though it is “a burden of gold.” She has become the passive victim of her own body.

15 Tim Powers’ Hide Me Among the Graves continues the trend set by Batchelor and Shute to rely on oversimplified, maudlin accounts of Siddal that writers such as H.D. and feminist art historians have been trying to correct. Shute and Batchelor wrote their depictions in the 1950s before the feminist reclamation of female artists began, but Powers’ novel was published in

2012, which makes his novel even more troubling than these earlier depictions. He blatantly ignores any of the work done to legitimize Siddal’s talent as an artist and chooses to model his version of her on outdated views. Siddal is more of a background character, but for a few sections of the novel the predictable, stereotypical focus on her illness, death and grave exhumation feature heavily. Admittedly the novel presents quite a twist on the familiar Pre-

Raphaelite narrative. In this version, Siddal has been possessed by two vampires, one of which is her husband’s uncle, John Polidori. Her illness immediately prior to her death is explained by the fact the vampires have possessed her and the later exhumation of her grave — which figures so heavily in her narrative — is for the purpose of ending the possession of her body. It is not the artistic license taken in this fictional twist on the tale that is a concern, but rather the condescending tone that the text takes on when portraying Siddal. In interactions with Rossetti,

Siddal is seen as a feeble victim. She spouts overwrought dialogue with lines such as, “ ‘Who can I trust,’ she whispered, ‘besides dead people?’ ” (Powers 70). She is a submissive, almost childlike figure within the text, asking Rossetti for permission for everything: “ ‘I’ll be rested. I should go out sometimes.’ Her fingers touched the torn paper, then quickly retreated. ‘Please’

” (70). She often breaks into wild temper tantrums. In response to one of her fits Gabriel explains the cause as “Jealousy. Baseless. Old pictures of models I don’t use anymore” (75).

His dismissive explanation casts her as an irrational, hysterical woman.

16 The novel does not ignore the fact that Siddal was both an artist and poet, but seeks to discredit her work. Through the point of view of Rossetti, the text reaffirms the opinion of women artists that has been so established by more traditional art historians. As Griselda Pollock discusses in “Vision, Voice and Power,” traditional art history that does reference women artists usually only does so “to remind us how inferior and insignificant [they] actually are” (33). In the novel, Rossetti reflects on Siddal’s poetry by thinking that he “wished she weren’t so devoted to poetry; she wrote a lot of it, and it was, frankly, pedestrian stuff” (Powers 152). When it comes to Siddal’s work as a visual artist Powers’ Rossetti thinks of “her pictures as lifeless, the figures blank faced and awkwardly proportioned”(68). Rossetti then goes on to comment on a drawing his sister, presumably Christina, who is just as cursed as Siddal, has produced: “he remembered a disturbing pencil sketch of a rabbit, drawn by his sister when she’d have been about fourteen and he absently touched the revolver he always carried” (69). Women’s art becomes ominous in this scene and its production is connected with vampiric possession. The thought of Rossetti’s sister’s drawing is so threatening to him that he feels compelled to reach for his revolver. While it is only Rossetti who expressly dismisses Siddal as an artist within the novel, there are no other characters who dispute his view, or provide other opinions. Since Rossetti is her husband, Siddal becomes his property and “if [a] woman is [a] man’s property then he must have authored her” (Gilbert and Gubar 13). Rossetti alone is given dominance over Siddal’s narrative. Siddal’s character is dismissed in the novel by the language used to describe her, and the lack of depth she is given in development.

In Not as She is I seek to disrupt this notion of Rossetti as the “author” of Siddal’s narrative and return the authority over her life to her. It is Siddal’s visual art that demonstrates

17 the power and authority she had. She transgressed her gender by becoming an artist because she placed herself in a role almost exclusively reserved for men at the time, as the one who views instead of being the object of another’s view. Feminist art historian Deborah Cherry has noted that Siddal’s paintings contain “the active imagery of looking, rather than being looked at,” her paintings can be seen “as interventions against art in which women are an explicit sign of masculine pleasure” (qtd. in Marsh xv). Siddal, who early on found herself in the role of the artist’s model, a passive female body to be painted and studied, chose to depict women actively looking back, and it can be assumed that she did so herself as an artist. For this reason I depict

Siddal gathering inspiration from her surroundings in my fictional depiction of her. In the opening of the novel she wants to draw the women she encounters on her walk to work, and later in the narrative, when she is in Paris, she actually stops on the street to sketch some flower girls.

In my representation of her she is always an acute observer of the environment around her, watching and interpreting the interactions she sees, whether it be in the studio modeling, or out later in one of the pubs. By this simple act of observing and judging she is being transgressive since in this era “[w]omen did not enjoy the freedom of incognito in the crowd . . . . They did not have the right to look, to stare, scrutinize or watch” (Pollock 100). The act of observing constitutes a risk, since “[t]he guarded respectability of the lady could be soiled by mere visual contact for seeing was bound up with knowing. This other world of encounter between bourgeois men and women of another class was a no-go area for bourgeois women” (Pollock 111). In my narrative Siddal hovers between the boundaries of gender and class: she is too poor to be a proper bourgeoise but she is in a class above those women who sell themselves to the bourgeois men. She becomes privy to both worlds: while modeling for Walter Deverell she converses with

18 his mother and sister, both bourgeoise, while in the pubs she encounters women selling themselves to men.

In my novel Siddal also physically transgresses her gender by stripping away her corset in a scene shortly before she looses her virginity to Rossetti. Corsets were a necessity for women’s fashion of the day as the dresses had shifted towards “a more bell-shaped figure” that the corset helped to achieve (Pool 214). By stripping off her corset in this scene Siddal is essentially freeing her body, no longer forcing it into the uniform shape that the corset would lend to it and that Victorian society would expect. I also wanted to make Siddal’s body transgressive in itself - during the Victorian era it was expected that “[a] lady should conquer a habit of breathing hard, or coming in very hot, or even looking very blue and shivery. Anything that detracts from the pleasure of society is in bad taste” (Hughes 175). In my novel I note how

Siddal’s body regularly violtes the boundaries between outside and inside; it actively excretes and secretes, Siddal sweats, shivers and even sneezes phlegm onto the floor at one point while modeling. Her body is no longer restricted by a desire not to do “[a]nything that detracts from the pleasure of society”; it is allowed to express itself fully through its physiology, in large part because of Siddal’s activities as a model and artist.

It is her transgressions against the expectations of her gender, and that she is entrapped in the liminal state between the upper and lower classes which causes the Siddal of my novel to lose balance and ultimately control in her life. She is not a prostitute, but she cannot be a “proper lady” either. She becomes a painter, but she cannot escape her role as a model. It is the divisive nature of her life that makes an interplay between first and second person so fitting for the narrative. All of the fictional representations of Siddal that have been previously discussed in this

19 exegesis portray her in the third person. The third-person point of view, especially when presented in the past tense, as the majority of these other texts have done, creates a greater feeling of distance between the reader and the character. First person allows for a far more evocative view of Siddal’s life by letting the reader experience it first-hand with her. By utilizing first person I demonstrate Siddal’s struggle to assert herself as an artist, but as Gilbert and Gubar point out “the creative ‘I am’ cannot be uttered if the ‘I’ knows not what it is. But for the female artist the essential process of self-definition is complicated by all those patriarchal definitions that intervene between herself and herself” (17). In Siddal’s case the patriarchal definitions refer to the gender expectations of the age she lived in as well as the way the men of the PRB define her when they paint her or interact with her. In order to have some better understanding of herself as “I” Siddal must “deconstruct the dead self that is a male ‘opus’ and discover a living,

‘inconstant’ self. She must, in other words, replace the ‘copy’ with the ‘individuality’” (19).

The “you” of second person point of view is ideal for capturing the moments within which Siddal deconstructs herself because “it is admirably suited to express the unstable nature and intersubjective constitution of the self” (Richardson 36), the “character is at once the same and the other” (Ellis 240). Siddal is aware of her identity, and remains fixed within her own body as she experiences life, but the use of “you” adds a sense of defamiliarization. Although still within her body the character feels somehow alienated from it, or able to view her actions objectively. The second-person point of view emulates the internal dialogue a person has with him or herself during moments of humiliation or emotional upheaval. Through conversing with herself as a “you” my character can work through a moment of trauma, or drastic change in her life. Unfortunately for Siddal, due to her addiction to laudanum and constant trauma in her life,

20 she becomes lost in the unstable second-person point of view and is unable to find her way back to the more confident “I” of first person. She deconstructs herself and becomes lost in this deconstruction.

In the process of creating Not as She is I studied both the traditional way that Siddal has been portrayed and the way that feminist art historians and academics have begun to challenge that more traditional portrayal. I applied that theoretical background to the other texts written about Siddal, searching for ways in which they empower a vision of her as a strong female artist, or undercut this idea by insisting on clinging to more traditional historical versions of her. Even texts which fit within the notion of reclaiming Siddal as a female artist leave something to be desired. They leave out portrayals of Siddal actively involved in her work as either a model or an artist. These are the scenes I felt were important to include with my novel, and by writing them in present tense and in either first-person or second-person point of view I provide a more evocative version of Siddal’s life that shows her as an empowered female artist, but also demonstrates the challenges she would have faced within this role, and the effect that modeling had on her conceptions of her body and its portrayal. The second-person point of view also allows me to explore Siddal’s laudanum addiction and the traumas of her life with greater emotional intensity and a degree of rawness that I feel other authors were not comfortable engaging in. My account of Siddal’s unusual life and the unfortunate way it ended combines a study of past fictional works with feminist art historians’ reclamations of her to create a text which strives to undercut the outdated way that both mainstream culture and art history continue to view this female artist.

21 Works Cited

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22 Hughes, Kristine. The Writer’s Guide to Everyday Life in Regency and Victorian England From

1811-1901. Cincinnati: F&W Publications, 1998. Print.

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Kelly, Mary. Imaging Desire. Massachusetts: MIT, 1996. Print.

Kitchen, Paddy. The Golden Veil. London: Hamish Hamilton, 1981. Print.

Knight, Joseph. The Life of Dante Gabriel Rossetti. London: Walter Scott, 1887. Print.

Marsh, Jan. The Legend of Elizabeth Siddal. 2nd ed. London: Quartet Books, 2010. Print.

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the Facts of Daily Life in 19th Century England. 1993. NY: Touchstone, 1994. Print.

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23 Richardson, Brian. “ ‘At First You Feel a Bit Lost’: The Varieties of Second Person

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Fiction. Columbus: The Ohio State UP, 2006. 17-36. Print.

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London: Ellis,1895. Print.

Scott, William Bell. Autobiographical Notes of the Life of William Bell Scott, and Notices of his

Artistic and Poetic Circe of Friends 1830 to 1882. Ed. W. Minto. London: Osgood,

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Sharp, William. Dante Gabriel Rossetti: A Record and Study. London: MacMillan, 1882. Print.

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Dante Gabriel Rossetti. London: Jarrolds, 1954. Print.

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N. pag. Print.

24 Not as She is

25 With his arm hooked through yours he helps lower you into the tub. The candles beneath it flicker with their feeble effort to keep the water warm. With the first step in the wedding dress clings to your right ankle, slicking against it till your skin shows pale pink through it. When your left foot plunges in, the water traces its way upward from the bottom hem, its newly gained weight tugging you downwards. And the warm water welcomes as you lie back in it, the light weight of it as it settles on your body.

Above you, he is only hands and a voice. Hands that arrange your limbs, tilt the chin up.

The voice now lost in a blur of water rushing into ears. A gaudy bouquet blazes in your peripheral vision. He tears the flowers apart. Some he beheads, others are still intact as the hands circle over you, dropping them onto the surface of the water. The flowers hover on the water, some petals cutting below the surface, but mostly they resist the urge to sink. They circle around you, flickering in and out of sight, this funerary confetti.

Even through the press of water on your eardrums you can tell he’s walking away, back to the canvas. You feel it more than hear it, the vibrations carrying through the water, tickling against the inner hollows of your ear.

In the preliminary sketches you were regal, the features of your face refined and your hair spread out in tendrils. He’d found a baroque beauty in you as Ophelia that no one else had.

And today the sketches become the painting. Delving down into the emotions more of a challenge now. In the womb-like silence of the tub every sensation of your body is amplified.

Your face feels too serene and contented, a suggestion of smile curling at the corners of your mouth. Focus on your lips, pulling pain into their expression, but as you do so feel your eyes now expressing the soft happiness you’d banished from your mouth. The little contraction of muscles

26 at the outer corner of each of them giving it away. You flick your eyelids closed, he won’t protest, he’ll understand you’re recalibrating, pulling yourself into the frozen mask of a dead woman. In the self-imposed blindness you find your heartbeat, focus only on that, let the da-dump, da-dump rhythm tug the competing emotions away. Your anxiety at posing in the tub, the excitement to see how the painting will take shape, your frustrations with your family, all must be silenced and stripped away. Open your eyes again, your face empty.

To bask in melancholy you’d relived the funeral for weeks now. The sound of the dirt hitting Charlie’s coffin. The way the sound was a chorus of contrasts. Some of the dirt in big chunks making a heavy thwump on the lid, the smaller grains of it a light summer rain hissing down on the wood. The half-frozen earth stung your palm when you took your first fistful, now the warmth of the bath soothes it.

The water cradles your limbs as the slow, acid burn of sorrow grows, a choking loss. Its progress unstoppable as it tears its way through the veins, kneads its hot knuckles into your guts, grabs your lungs and squeezes, your lips parting as the air leaves. The ceiling is white, white above, pinpricks of light blossom into stars, eyeballs tricking you as they fatigue and lose their focus.

Toes pierce through the surface, and the water rings around each one with a warm weight. The dress and the slip beneath it lift from the skin every now and again and then settle, a wet whisper of fabric against skin.

The man has arranged your arms with the elbows pointing downwards and wrists emerging. The fingers are cupped and drape listlessly back against the water as if they hold a holy offering. The embroidery of the dress is a damp palm pressing its ornate pattern against

27 your chest. A slight movement of the water has disbursed the flowers, and the stem of one arches up to trace a line along your collar bone, tickles the skin there and makes you want to itch, but your fingers are no longer your own for using, they must remain where they lie, floating along the surface. At first they are your hands, fingers cramping and then stiffening, but with time they are the empty weight at the end of your arms, just as your feet lose their sense of forms as well.

Then legs and arms become numb frames extending from your torso, your torso reduced to the inflation and deflation of lungs, bellows to drive the drum of your heartbeat.

The ceiling holds the patterns of what Ophelia would have seen: the spidery limbs of willows as they cut the sky above into slivers; thin, green leaves slicing up the blue expanse. It’s a luminescent day when Ophelia dies, everything hugging onto the light, the flowers in your clasped hands on fire with colour. The flowers release from the ivory clasp of your stiff fingers and trickle onto the billowing folds of the dress. Then they travel outward, dragging off your exposed wrists, catching between your fingertips, encircling your neck. A decadent way to die.

Songbirds piping out a funeral dirge as you float, entirely mute, below them.

A breeze tears at the branches above now, crinkling the surface of the water, raising the hair on your exposed flesh, an animal response to the prickling of its bodiless breath on your skin. The current of the river picks up in time with the wind, the bank on either side losing focus with the speed. The water’s surface churning into a froth, stones peeking the crowns of their heads from the bed of the river are roaring as you whip past them. The river forces your body to echo its rippling convulsions. The branches above are stuttering and spasming, the sound of twigs scraping against each other a death rattle.

28 The ploosh of what sounds like two stones dropping into the water on either side of you, but are really two hands that grab you, pull you from the river, from the tub. The hands hauling you up and holding you. A voice, muffled at first, cuts clearer as water releases from your ears.

The voice shouting, “Lizzie! Lizzie, wakeup!” Your whole body is shaking and you can’t make it stop.

29 March 14, 1849

This morning a woman stopped short in front of a shop window. She could have been examining the wares on display behind, but I’ve been on the other side of that glass often enough at the milliner’s where I work, and at my father’s shop that makes up the front parlor of our home. Any interested customer I’ve ever watched doesn’t stare in such a fixed way, their irises dart back and forth, quickly tracing over the object. If they stared too intently then they would give themselves away and one of the shopkeepers would dart out the front door to pressure them into a sale. This woman paused for too long, she forgot about getting caught up, she was lost in what she saw in the glass. From where I was standing all I could see was the back of her head, the only glimpse of her face was the distortion the glass reflected back.

Her face was a bit on the fleshy side, but she had a warm mouth that looked as though it rarely went without smiling. Her smile was wilting and there was the barest hairline fracture of a frown on her brow. And then she brought her hand up to her face, one finger to the outer corner of her eye. She leaned forward and pulled the skin taut, and then released it, her hand still hovering in front of her. The fracture line of her frown deepened, and the downturning of her lips made other cracks appear and she traced those with her fingers too. Then she straightened both herself and her skirts and strode off down the street, her shoulders hunched against a wind I couldn’t feel.

It was if I’d seen her back at home in the midst of dressing, holding a hand mirror to study herself. There was the risk of that moment of her exposure when she might have turned around and caught me there, watching. Her outrage. But it wouldn’t have really been warranted.

She had no way to know that I was recording. That I walk around during the day leaflets of

30 images stacking up within me. That I’ll put her down on paper when I return home in the evening. I want to capture that gesture of vulnerability, her finger trying to pull away the proof of aging, her doughy body slumping against finding those first few lines.

The evening is the perfect time for my work, its silence paralyzes the house. My younger sister, Lydia, is nothing more than a deep-breathing form under our blankets. By this point she’s been asleep for an hour or more, the blankets drawn over her head to keep out the faint light from my stump of tallow candle.

No one but Lyddy knows about my drawing. Mama felt that water color painting was proper for a girl to learn, and so she taught me when I was little, that and many other things she thought a lady should know. Not that I, or any of my other sisters will ever be proper ladies, but

Mama hasn’t let that hope die yet.

She always had us paint simple things when she let us share the little tin of water colors.

We were to paint leaves and flowers, butterflies sometimes when they would stay long enough for us to get them down. But those things became tiresome to me as I grew older and Mama didn’t think it necessary that we learn how to capture anything more complex. I thought I’d forget all about that first thrill of putting something down on paper, but then Tennyson arrived. I was sixteen when I found him, not as a leather-bound book resting in my palms, but as a wrapping for the pat of butter I brought home for Mama. Usually the butter was wrapped in bits of newsprint and I tossed their greasy folds away, but this time the words held me, the paper slick on my hands as I read the first two stanzas of “Mariana in the South.” Of course I didn’t realize it wasn’t the whole poem, not being familiar with the man’s work then; I wasn’t given a book of his till a couple years later. But it was complete to me then and perhaps I preferred this, not to

31 know the love the girl in the poem mourned after. Her simple pain was enough, the moaning of it to her virgin Mary. I saw her fingers caught up in her reams of hair, hair that reminded me of the tangles of debris that would get caught up on the banks of the Thames and then dry in the sun, bedraggled streamers of filth. Her eyes would be swollen from tears, her lips a raw red from her teeth gnawing at them. “To live forgotten, to love forlorn.” Anonymous words a chorus in my mind, and the more I returned to it, to the few stanzas I’d been given, the more I longed to draw this woman. Wanted to figure out how to sketch misery on her face.

I never asked Mama, but somehow I suspected that it wouldn’t be proper to draw such things and that’s when I began snitching pencils and paper from my father’s workshop, began to hoard them, and draw the expressions of women’s faces. Or attempted to. I became obsessed by it, how one could capture a look by the tension of the brow, the downturned corner of the lips, the glazed eyes. I would study women at the shops, on the streets as they passed me by and try to hoard away the little nuances that made their faces unique. Surely it would not be polite to sketch them there on the street, and lay bare my process before them, so I imprinted each detail: beauty mark, flush of cheek, texture of hair. I pressed these images into my mind like flowers between the pages of a book, and like pressed flowers, when I drew them, they came out flat, the colour bleached from my memory of them.

My knees ache from kneeling in front of our dresser. I dig through it for my materials, the icy hardwood floor pimpling my skin and making the hair rise. I pull my dressing robe a little tighter, rock on my knees to try and give them some relief.

Here beneath the stockings is a bit of paper with one unused space left in the corner. That might be just enough. How much of her to capture? Probably just her head and torso. It’s the

32 reflection that is most important, the way she studies herself, her fingers trying to pull time away from around her eyes. So the space should be enough, yes. And now a pencil.

My fingers comb below the stockings, flick between the layers of petticoats, digging and digging. Surely there was one left, a little nub at the very least? But when was the last time I’d even sketched? Could’ve been a month or more. The rest of the pencil might have been used up then and I’ve just forgotten. Nothing here, that’s for sure. I pull myself back up to standing, rub the dull pain in my knees and place my treasured scrap of paper on the dresser.

This means another sly creep down to the workshop. It’s been long enough that he won’t notice surely. Papa should have another stub or two laying about down there. I blow out the candle. No sense in wasting it when I won’t be able to take it along. Learning how to navigate the house in the darkness was the most important thing to learn for these missions. A candle might not give off that much light, but the thought of anything that might increase my chances of getting caught made me too anxious. The half-moon that pokes its pale fingers through whatever window it can find will be a help to me at least.

Shapes begin to find their forms again in the room: the angular shadow of the headboard of the bed, the dresser slowly pulling out from the darkness, and the faint sheen from our mirror.

At the door I turn the knob slowly, slowly, slowly, until the latch is pulled all the way back.

Then, and only then, do I pull the door toward me, grabbing the knob on the other side now, not releasing it until the door is closed behind, and even then only letting it go bit by bit until the latch slides back in smoothly without a sound.

Now the stairs. I’ve a map in my mind, all the places to avoid: the left side of the third stair from the top groans; the right side of the halfway stair will give a grinding screech; and in

33 the middle, on the second last step from the bottom, a predictable creak. I skirt around each one, bare feet meeting the ground slowly before pressing all the weight down.

My bare feet softly slapping on the hardwood I head for the flickering glow of the range in the kitchen. I pause briefly before it, let my feet sponge up the warmth that’s oozed from the pulsing coals at the heart of the range into the stone tiles that surround it.

The entrance to Papa’s workshop is off the back of the kitchen. This is where he spends most of the day, at his grindstone sharpening the dull blades of knives and scissors brought to him as a part of his business, the service he relies on most for pay. We are not welcome back here, us girls anyways, unless we’ve been sent for a scolding, and so the first time I thought to sneak a pencil it felt deliciously forbidden. And now, just as then, I’m struck by how hollow the room feels. It’s not that the room is empty of objects, the place is strewn with hammers, files and a miscellany of other tools not to mention knives, scissors and the sheets of paper covered in the sketches of the new cutlery he designs. No, it’s the lack of his presence that makes the place feel barren. As we wash dishes, or help prepare meals, my sisters and I can feel him through the walls. You’d think a man with that kind of presence would be broad in girth and brash in his way of speaking. But my papa is neither of these things. He’s tall though, and all his limbs, his fingers even, seem too long, but he moves them with an calculated, aggressive force. Precise and measured, not one movement is wasted. Never one to talk much at the dinner table, the few times he does utter a few words his hand gestures all but drown them out. He is the man behind the wall, rattling, banging, grinding. Relentless. The only time these sounds come to a halt is for the rare moments of error and then there’s a blast of curses in their place.

34 The drawer where he keeps the pencils isn’t too far from the door. A lucky thing, for even though this isn’t my first time invading the place, I still feel unwelcome. The room seems to resent my presence, making me stub my toe on the leg of a worktable as I pass through. Teeth driving into my lower lip I compress the pain into a quick burst of air through my nose and a small groan. Hand cradling the foot I try to work out if I’ve broken the toe or not or not, the pain throbbing along the whole length of it and jetting up into the rest of my foot. Pushing the pain away, trying to ignore its urgent pulses, I drop my foot back down, pull open the drawer that will end my hunt.

My eyes don’t see the pencils, but my fingers do. I select them one by one, feeling the tips of those not yet carved into service, checking the length of them also. The shortest one of the lot is always the one to take, the one that will be the least missed, but first to check that there are a couple of others similar to it so nothing will seem amiss. There’s been a couple of times when I’ve heard him remark about it to himself, grumbling that he could have sworn he had just freshly sharpened a pencil. Lyddy knew better than to look at me when we overheard these things washing dishes, but she warned me about it later. There are three stubby ones, lucky for me. The one with the sharpest end will do. There’s a pocket knife kept in the dresser too for sharpening the point, but may as well begin with the best to be found.

I lift the drawer a little and slide it bit by bit back into place. My return to the room follows the same careful route, the same measured placement of weight on feet, and I’m back again, the stub of pencil hot and moist in the tight fist I’ve made around it.

There’s a groan from the bed as I strike a match, relight a candle. “Really Lizzie? Must you?” Lyddy says, words coming out clumsy with sleep.

35 “It’s been nearly a month since the last time,” I breathe back, hoping to get her talking back to the necessary whisper.

“Put it below then. It’s too bright where you have it.” She hasn’t caught on that she ought to speak softly, still mumbling loudly, but I take the candle grudgingly down to the hardwood floor, pull out some petticoats from the dresser to cushion and keep away the cold.

My paper scrap before me and pencil in hand I close my eyes. Remember. The lay of the sun and the shadow, the places of distortion in the reflection, the shape of the woman’s face in the glass.

A rough sketch first, the ghost of the lines skimming the surface of the paper. And there’s the outline of her torso to begin with, and head, and then the rough square of the window. Now where to begin drawing in the details? The bonnet. A familiar shape. It shields the back of her head entirely from view, but I add a few wisps of hair that’ve escaped from pins and peek out from below the bonnet at the nape of her neck. And now the upper-section of the bonnet fanning out. If she turned her face just a little to the right maybe a bit of her cheek would show, or her brow, but no, the way she was standing kept her true face from view.

Leave the bonnet for now and to the window. Straight lines are always so troublesome to draw. Mustn’t fudge it because there’s never a possibility of erasing, of taking the lines back from the paper and so I start lightly, pressing harder as the forming line becomes more certain of itself. The edges of the window more defined now. The window sectioned off into its four panes and those worked from lighter feathered lines to bold, black ones.

The reflection. That will be the toughest part. I can start an outline of it now. Come back to it later. The woman’s back and shoulder, the back of her dress: these are the things I’m

36 more sure of how to tackle. She was in a dark grey dress, a dowdy thing really and so now the shading starts, the pencil at a careful angle to make the shading smooth and without flaw. As the pencil fills the space with an even grey there’s the warm pleasure of perfect shading where the pencil strokes are almost entirely invisible. I use to have to cheat to get this before, use my finger, or a handkerchief. But Mama gave me a good reaming out when she’d found five or six or so of my handkerchiefs with black smudges.

The punishment was good in a way because it meant no more cheating. The shading would just have to improve. I’ve found a way of perfecting it so I won’t have to smudge. The right angle, the right pressure on the pencil. Every time my shading gets a little smoother.

The dress near to being finished, I start adding the shadows, dark contours, giving her body and the garment some dimension. I give the dress little creases where they seem to make sense. Pause. Draw the paper back and study it. The creases are out of place; they look forced, not natural. Smudge them out, blend them back into the dress. Smudging isn’t cheating if it’s for erasing. I add them back in again, different places and take my time now. Can’t afford too many mistakes or the drawing will begin to look muddy.

The pencil finds its way back to the bonnet. It was a cream-coloured one, so I let the pencil just barely skim over the paper. Light, light pressure for the shading here. And a few shadows here and there.

Pause again. Look at the space left for the reflection. Pencil lifts and drops to rest there, not sure where to begin.

Back to the window instead. Shade a little more? Add some more definition? No, the window is good as it is.

37 Start with the shape of her face at least. Sketch in her round face, the suggestion of the finger she’s brought up to her eyelid, the plump arm coming back from the hand, connecting to the shoulder. Shade her jowly contours where the fat of her chin hung. The nose a little snub one with just the suggestion of nostrils and then lips. They still had a bit of an upturn when she first studied herself, but it doesn’t quite matter if I haven’t quite captured the way that smile fell limp as she stood there. It’s the eyes that are the key to all of it. How to show that look? The face staring back at her was a betrayal. Is there a way to capture that? I could remove that glint I usually give them, that quick flicker of spirit that slits across the pupil and iris.

The pencil descends.

But is that really what the drawing calls for? She seemed weary too. Drawing bags under the eyes might be the best way to suggest this, but I’ve not done that before, it could be tricky. If I make a mistake on the eyes it can’t be smudged away.

There are other sketches on this same sheet, women mostly. Three of which I’d tried to smudge the eyes out in order to start anew. All three have a sooty smear of pencil blinding them, the lines that had made up their eyes half-visible in some places. Other sketches have no eyes at all, where I hadn’t bothered, or became too frustrated, hand frozen over the paper, unsure of my next move. A cluster of half-formed faces they look drowned somehow, with the gauzy smear of lead where their eyes would be.

I’ll return to them at some point. I will. When I know more, when I’ve gotten it right at least once.

38 But bags under the eyes, I’ll have to consider that, maybe do some studying of it on my next walk. Bags under the eyes . . . I’ll have them soon enough if I don’t watch it. Might have them already without noticing.

I tuck away pencil and paper, huff out the candle. The light has burned outlines of the furniture into my eyes so that the edges of the dresser are a specter hovering wherever I look. I crawl back into bed, careful not to press my frigid skin against Lyddy’s no matter how much it would be nice to warm up against her.

The butterflies I used to draw as a girl were tantalizing to capture, with their interlacing of black lines and tropical hues, but the butterflies never felt anything. Not that I was aware of anyhow. How would one see their emotions? Perhaps it was there, but it was just that their eyes were too small. That’s where one sees most of the emotions, or where I do at least. If only I’d looked closer, bothered to hold up Mama’s magnifying glass to get a good view of their faces.

But I’d never thought to, and so whenever I painted them they were just as rigid as the flowers and plants we picked for our studies. There was none of their real life charm, the faint quiver of their bodies, twitch of their wings. Mama taught us about shadow and light, but never how to paint things as though there is blood and feeling to them, a heart palpitating beneath the flesh.

There is something dangerous about that, making something too alive on a sheet of paper. I close my eyes, try to push the frustration away.

39 March 23, 1849

He’s too young to be in here, that’s my first thought when I notice him at the front of the store. He can’t be much more than a year or two older than me. We never see young men in here, mostly older retired chaps being bustled about from this shop to the next by their plump, ever-chatting wives. Even from my position behind the counter I can study the small details that make him up, although I don’t do so directly. He has the ivory skin of an aristocrat and stubble stains his cheeks like pepper spilt across a white linen tablecloth.

I work behind the counter because I’m not quite attractive enough for the front. And that’s why I feel uneasy when, after I’ve noticed him, I realize he’s been watching me. It must be the bonnet I’m stitching, my fingers stutter, uncertain of the stitches they’ve just made. I’ve been called handsome by family friends. I suppose that’s better than nothing, although I can’t help but wonder if they aren’t implying that there is something mannish about me.

At Mrs. Tozer’s shop the beautiful ones, like Jeanette, are placed in the front to assist the customers, to stand out on the street calling people in. It’s all very logical, you’d want to pick the women that are envied by the others. It makes the customers hungry enough to come into the shop and vulnerable once they get in the doors.

Not only must the front of shop girls be gorgeous, but also aggressive. God help the poor woman caught scuttling along Cranbourne in last year’s fashions. They’ll drag her into the shop and all but strip her naked to force her into something stylish and modern.

There isn’t a difference between the hats of last year and the hats of this. Maybe the shape changes slightly, or one colour becomes prized over others, but the women aren’t really buying a hat. Oh they think they are, but really they are buying the statement they want the hat

40 to make. A middle-aged woman will walk in and see one of the girls modeling the newest designs, and she’ll buy one to be fitted and made for herself, perhaps change the colour, or the embellishments a little, but what she’s really after is the vitality of that girl. She imagines that the colour she’s chosen will make her cheeks look flushed with youth. The ribbon will hold back the sagging skin of her chin, make the line of it seem sharp again. I almost pity them. They see the slim waists, the unmarred skin not pocked yet by dilating pores and they long for the return to something impossible. To feel time stripped from their bodies.

I, unfortunately, know all too well the lives and minds behind these enviable bodies.

Their mouths run off with words before their brains can make the connection. They stream off a tedium of tales of flirtations with men they hardly know. When there are no more words to be said, they mutely watch from the windows till their next hapless victim passes by.

Jeanette is the only girl in the shop whom I envy as much as the customers do. At the moment she stands outside drawing people in with her clear, rich voice. Jeanette has a peachy complexion that makes any colour she wears all the more radiant, and the narrow waist with flaring hips, the silhouette that all men desire. At the moment she wears a dark crimson bonnet.

The sun has barely emerged through the thick clouds of fog for the past few weeks, but as she pauses near the door, the satin of the bonnet has a sheen to it as though she stands in a slant of sunlight. The ringlets of her black hair trail on either side of her face; a perfect frame for her long thin nose and pointed chin.

I didn’t think much of Jeanette until a week ago. Before then she was just the girl I walked home with, since the two of us are the only ones living in Southwark. We traded the kind of idle talk that’s utterly meaningless and entirely forgettable. I detest this because half the time

41 you wonder if you’ve already asked a person how they passed their Sunday, or how they find the weather today, and the terror of you doing just that and making a complete fool of yourself is too much to bear. It’s not worth bothering about really, and most of the time I wouldn’t care to make small talk, but with Jeanette it was unavoidable. The silence, in comparison, far more intolerable. And so we found ourselves in these stilted conversations every evening on our trip home, until last week.

Jeanette may not be particularly bright, but I will credit her on her tendency to keep her life private. Unlike the other girls she never blathers on about her latest flirtations, so I was particularly shocked when a man came and joined us on our stroll home last week. He was handsome enough, with soft twists of chestnut hair, but it was not his looks that made him so striking, rather his words. Even with the Irish accent, he spoke intelligently of his philosophies and his beliefs and with an exuberant energy that made it impossible not to listen to him. “A man,” he’d said, “should have all the passion in the world for his job, otherwise he’s not really living is he? How many toil away at work they detest, and then what? Then they die.” I thought of my father selling his wares in the shop back at home, sharpening knives and scissors, putting new sets of cutlery on display. I’d never wondered before whether he loved his work, never thought to ask him.

When it came to this man’s work his desire for it was overpowering, and he dropped away all pretensions of modesty. “I have finally reached that moment of maturation in my work where it will published,” he said. “The poems are like a few rare bottles of claret, the ones aged to perfection. The flavour of their words finely honed by my twisting and meddling with them.

Imagine it! My first volume bound and copied and bound to be read by all!” His outright

42 exuberance for his own work was distasteful. He seemed to know nothing of the virtue of being humble about one’s accomplishments. I felt as though I ought to be disgusted by him, but there was a sincerity in those words that was lacking in most people I knew. When he spoke to her he leaned in as close as he dared, sometimes reaching out to clasp her forearm. But there was no equal passion in her, her body tensed whenever he drew too near and craned away from him as much as could be politely done. In response to such rousing talk of his work she merely nodded and gave him pinched smiles. Never once did she ask if she could read his poems, or have him recite something for her.

He never so much as acknowledged my presence, but then I had not been the one he had asked to walk home with. I clung to Jeanette out of routine, and the threat of men waiting for a moment of vulnerability out in the darkness beyond the street, waiting for a woman to be alone just long enough. There were other small groups of people heading home as we were, most of them shop girls like Jeanette and I. We drifted past a cluster of girls trundling along slowly, their bonnets almost touching in their intimate conversations. When I arrived home Lydia would be so envious when I shared this with her, and it’s true she was. Even when I told her that the poet had barely muttered a goodbye when our company had parted ways. Had there been a look of relief on his face when I left them, or was that merely my imagination?

Lydia adored any stories I might bring home to her about my day. When I was little I used to make up tales for her, fantasies based around Le Morte d’Arthur. Now that we were older it was the little moments of drama that I saw occurring around me, or the odd encounter with some eccentric personality that she enjoyed most. Her face, stiffened and set with fatigue, would soften, her eyes lifting up into a smile before her lips did. Her arrival home was always

43 much later than my own as she worked two jobs during the day. She told me that I must press

Jeanette for more details about this man. What was his name? Perhaps he would be someone famous! When I asked Jeanette about him the next morning as we walked to the shop, all she would say was that his name was William Allingham, and yes, he was a poet. She spoke the word “poet” in a flat manner, as if it could easily be replaced by “baker” or “grocer.”

I expect poets have an addiction to beauty, it is necessary for their work after all. There’s

Mariana with her flowing hair. Can you imagine if Tennyson chose to write the life of a homely girl, or even just a handsome one? There would be no bold romances leading in heartache, only a monotonous routine that would be enough to kill any poem no matter how skilled the man who penned it. And that is why I’m sure this man studying me now is in fact watching my fingers as they deftly stitch ribbon onto a bonnet. A man of his age and means has likely never seen a woman stitching, that’s what has stirred a sense of interest. His servants likely do all the mending and sewing, and that would be done in their quarters, well away from him. My stitching complete, I knot the thread and it catches on the dry, cracked skin of my fingers, and slices away at the flesh. I put my finger to my mouth to suck away the small trickle of blood, to keep it from spoiling the work, trying to stop its flow with my tongue, the metallic notes of it an aftertaste that lingers in my mouth. There’s a rag I keep close at hand to dab away what remains, little smears of blood flecking its surface.

I never noticed him enter, but then that is not my job. Mrs. Tozer and the more senior assistants give me measurements and specifications for each hat and I help fill the orders. I am to have nothing to do with helping the customers unless asked.

44 In the small glances I take from my work I continue studying him. The sweeping arc of his eyebrows is what makes him so striking, that and the eyes below them that seem to belong more to some unruly child than to a man. His gaze takes in everything with a kind of naive wonder that plays out in his clasped hands which are constantly writhing about, fingers tapping along to some unheard melody. He pulls aside an older woman who is deep in conversation with

Mrs. Tozer, his mother I assume, and now she glances in my direction too and nods. Perhaps he thinks she ought to buy a hat much like the one in my hands. Now they’ve called Mrs. Tozer over and all three of them study the hat, discussing it intently. Mrs. Tozer leans forward, her hands knotted together in front of her heart, a posture that was her ritual for closing a sale, but as they spoke to her, her eyes flick over to mine and she gives a slight nod of her head to me as if I were a co-conspirator. Both movements occurred so quickly that I couldn’t be sure whether they’d even happened, or what she might have meant by them. I flex my cramping fingers and fall back upon my work. There were far too many orders to be finished today to stand about musing on some brief gesture of Mrs. Tozer’s. As she herself always told us, she was here to sell fashion and beauty, not to be our mother.

I didn’t notice when the young man and his mother left the shop, my eyes squinted to slits to focus on sewing beads to the band of the hat. My fingers pinch them up, not much bigger than wildflower seeds, as I bring the needle to pierce through the minuscule eye in the middle.

Finding the eye of the bead was near impossible some days. Mrs. Tozer could not afford as many lamps for those of us in the back of the shop as she might have liked and so shadows over- lapped shadows and crept into the crevices that the smoky spread of light from the lamps could not find. Our dim and dingy back corner, was, in the minds of the window girls, proof that they

45 were more privileged. They told us crows’ feet would multiply on our faces with all our squinting, but I suspected that in their case portions of their brains were rotting from their pointless jabbering. I pictured large sections beneath their skulls so underused that they had begun decaying, the flesh withering away to a black, foul pulp. I would rather take on the crows’ feet.

“Miss Siddall?” Mrs. Tozer jolts me out of my work, a bead that I had pinched between thumb and finger shoots out and vanishes into one of the cracks on the work table. I look up expecting measurements and instructions for the bonnet I would likely be making for the older woman.

“I have an order for a new bonnet, but one of the other girls will be making it. You will be delivering it instead.”

“Am I being promoted, Mrs. Tozer?” It’s a bit forward to suggest such a thing, but my curiosity about her earlier gesture prompts me into it.

“In a manner of speaking, I suppose so. The woman who just purchased the bonnet from me is Mrs. Deverell, a very valued customer of mine. Her son is a talented young artist named

Walter. He’s searching for model for a new painting of his. He was rather struck by you, and would like you to be that model, but they want to be sure of this, so they would like to meet with you at their home. They made no mention of what they would offer you as a wage, but mark me, models do very well. Not many have the opportunity of doing their work in a respectable household neither. I have already made an agreement with the Deverells that, should you model for him, I would only require you to work your customary hours on Thursday, Friday and

Saturday. The beginning of the week may be yours to pursue this.” She pauses to get a sense of

46 my interest, but my face is too numb for emotion, so she continues, “Of course if this position is not agreeable you might return to your full hours. You’re a good girl with the needle, and it does seem a waste to lose you, but the Deverells have always been my most generous clients. Mr.

Deverell has of course that high position at the School of Design. Some of my best girls have come from there.”

I fumble my thank you’s to her, my tongue somehow not able to form the words. My fingers find their way back to stitching on the beads, separate from my mind which still seeks to settle everything that has occurred into some sort of order. To model my body for a man. That a man would want my body for a model at all, it was absurd. But I would sit there while he stared, and while I felt the hips that were lacking, the neck that was too long. And what if he wanted more of me, respectable house or not I might be left vulnerable, no chaperone to protect me. My family would disown me, they might toss me out even for pursuing it in the first place.

But this man would be an artist, like me he spent his time sketching out life, only he made a living at it. The thought of it, making a living at what now was just a secret hobby only

Lyddy knew of. My secret stashed in the bottom of the dresser. The lines of my work from last night still linger in my fingers, a sketch of girl selling wilting flowers I had come upon during my walk to Mrs. Tozer’s. She had called out to passersby as though the blooms were exotic and rare, a gift deserving of their price. I hadn’t finished that one either, the hands gave me a bit of trouble, and of course the eyes again. I’d drawn a light outline of them, but hadn’t bothered to try and shade or do anything more with them. I could bring the sketch with me, present it to the father who worked at the School of Design, his eyes would study lines that perhaps might prove me worthy to him. He would no longer see me as a woman, but would offer a place at the school

47 where I could gather what was missing. I’d get the heart beat and the blood of living things on paper for once.

48 March 26, 1849

Mrs. Tozer won’t let me work on the bonnet. It’s because I’m to deliver it; she thinks if

Mrs. Deverell isn’t pleased with it that I’ll become too emotional over it and ruin my chances at a good impression. It makes sense, I suppose.

Sarah is the one working at it. Her worktable is at the other end of the shop from mine which is most inconvenient. Making excuses to fetch things from over there would be too obvious. From here all that’s visible is the back of her bent head, her wisps of ashy-blonde hair pulled into a bun. That and her stitching. She brings the needle and thread so far out from the bonnet to pull the stitch tight. Hasn’t Mrs. Tozer bothered to teach her about the economy of movement, how very vital it is? If she would only keep her movements smaller and closer to the work she’d make more rapid progress.

I don’t know much more about Sarah than that her stitching is infuriating to watch. I can’t say I’ve ever spoken to her. I’ve never really spoken to any of the others. They resent me for it. Conversation is a trade, two women offering up vulnerabilities to one another in order to bond. Each vulnerability offered up to match the one that’s just been said. If one listens, but doesn’t take part then they know nothing about you, and you’ve learned entirely too much about them. There’s a weight to knowing too much. One of the girls will come in for her shift and I’ll be thinking of what she told us all last week, the story of the man with grubby whiskers who had a try at kissing her on the way home. How she managed to get away with a struggle, scratching his face during her retreat. And she would’ve forgotten about it perhaps, but then she’d catch me looking at her for too long, and she’d know why. And she had no tales from me to reassure her.

49 There’s no option of not being subjected to these stories. Presence alone is participation.

And I did try earlier on, when I was first hired by Mrs. Tozer, to be friendlier, but who wants to hear from the girl with the bad-luck red hair? Any time I open my mouth in this place I feel a fool. The wit I perceive I have never quite escapes my lips, catches instead behind my teeth. I chew on my small social failures for the rest of the day, worry them about in my mouth, my lips twitching half muttering. Solitude is something I’ve learned to take a kind of comfort in, the people who manage to pierce though it are the only ones worth bothering with anyhow.

Both Papa and Mama have no idea of the Deverells’ offer to me. It doesn’t seem worthwhile to tell them unless the Deverells are sincerely interested. Perhaps Mrs. Deverell will come and discuss it with them if Walter decides I suit him. If the Deverells are as well placed in society as Mrs. Tozer would have me believe then Mama is sure to be won over by the idea of it.

Papa and his conservative ways are another matter though. He is not unlike me, falling silent when it suits him. But it suits him to use it against others. He cuts off his words as punishment and the silence pulls through the room, a tide pressing against your chest, making breathing strained.

Back home in the evening, with Papa’s snoring the only sound, an uneven blast of air and snorts and his whistling nose rumbling from the room next door, I whisper everything to Lyddy.

She lays as she always does with her back to mine and so all I see is the twisting coils of her braided hair. Lyddy braids it in this fashion overnight in the belief it keeps it cleaner. There may be something to it for when it comes her time for a hot bath her hair still has a shine to it while mine is thick with grease. I stare at her two braids running parallel along her skull and describe all of it. Then I wait. Her breath is long and even. Perhaps she has fallen asleep? “Lyddy?”

50 “Hold on. Only let me think on it for a bit.” She does like to ruminate on things. I work my fingers into my own hair, spin it into thick twists, then there’s the frayed hem of my nightgown sleeve that I begin picking away at. Lyddy’s advice is always worth waiting for, no matter how frustrating it might be.

When all of us sit at the table for meals it is Lyddy who says the least of all of us, but her gray eyes trace the lines of conversation as they dart through the air between my parents and the other siblings. There are eight of us in all: Charles and Anna being the eldest, then myself, then

Lyddy, Mary, Clara, James and little Henry. Charles and Annie have left us already, Anna married off only last month, but before they were gone Lyddy knew the workings of all of us.

I shiver a little, waiting for Lyddy’s response. I’ve withdrawn to the far side of the bed to let her think and the draught from the window slides its glacial tongue along the back of my neck and down into the rigid folds of my freshly washed nightgown. With laundry day only yesterday, everything I own is stiff again, chafes against my skin. Just as my dresses, slips and petticoats begin to soften, to yield to my body, then they must be washed again and the process started over. It’s the same with the linens on the bed. If I were to slip from them right now they’d hold my form like a mould’s been made of them. Lydia might turn around and for a moment think

I’m still there before realizing what she takes to be me is only empty space, but Lydia draws in a deep breath, and I abandon this silly notion. “The timing is very lucky for you I think,” she says.

“You mean with Anna being married off so recently? I’m sure that would be on Mama’s mind were the Deverells to meet with her, but I’m not sure marriage is really what’s being offered.”

51 “Perhaps not, but you might change their minds. You might change his mind to begin with. He picked you as a model didn’t he?”

“I hardly know his intentions. The whole thing is very odd.”

“You underestimate yourself I think.” She turns to lie on her back and I see the sharp silhouette of her nose against the murky moonlight, this pale, glowing smoke that has filtered in through the grimy glass window. Our mother is often counseling her on how she might dress, or do this or that with her hair to offset this nose, which she says is roman and altogether too masculine. “Have you ever seen any artist desire to paint an ugly woman?”

I shake my head in response.

“Well then, there you have it,” she says. “If these Deverells are as well off as you seem to think, then Mama will be sure to see the opportunity in it. Papa will be more difficult to persuade of course, but then that’s his way about everything.”

“And if I don’t want to marry him?”

“Then you’re being foolish. Besides, you already have something in common, and that is rare enough isn’t it? Perhaps he will teach you more about drawing. He’s probably been to the

Academy.”

The sheets rustle as she turns her back to me again. I squirm close to her warmth, expecting her body to be the relaxed, slack one of someone already fast asleep. She has a gift of being able to drift off quickly. Instead, her body is tensed, poised as if she wants to speak again, but has not yet found the words, and so I wait until she does. Beneath the thick coils of her hair I can just make out the scalloped edges of her lace collar.

“Lizzie?” Her voice holds a hint of anxiety, embarrassment even.

52 “Yes?”

There is a long pause. I wait. “Is he handsome?”

“I’m not sure that I could say. He was in the shop so briefly-”

“But what did you see? What did you notice? I mean you must have seen something of him.”

I’m thrown off by the desperate rush of her words, “Why do you ask?”

She doesn’t answer.

“He had very striking eyebrows.” I say, “ And his fingers, he had very long, pale fingers.”

“Fingers and eyebrows? That’s all you noticed?”

“Well his eyebrows were quite exceptional. Very dramatic arch to them.”

Lydia lets out a snort, “You’re so odd. I’ll be amazed if we can ever marry you off.” I growl in irritation at her. She coughs out laughter.

She turns towards me, her whisper flat, the laughter no longer present in her voice, “Is he handsome though? I can hardly picture him with your description.”

“I suppose so. Well what is it about him that you most want described?”

“His eyes I suppose. That’s always what I notice first. You know, I’ve never spoken of this before, but as I walk to work in the morning — ”

“Yes?”

“When I’m walking to the shop sometimes I, well when men walk by I look directly into their eyes as I walk towards them and just keep on staring until they walk past me. You can see so much in their eyes. Whether they are kind or gentle, dull or passionate.”

She stares down men in the streets? Quiet, placid little Lydia?

53 Lydia squirms a little on the sheets beside me, “I know, it isn’t proper. It’s just the excitement of the thing — ”

“Of course. But you might give them the wrong idea, being so bold like that!”

“I imagine if I were someone else they might get the wrong idea. But they don’t. I don’t think they even notice.”

“I’m rather impressed, you know. Who would’ve thought you so gutsy!”

She sighs, “They never look back at me after I’ve passed.” She bunches the top edge of our quilt in her hand and tugs it up higher over her shoulders, “We had better get to sleep now don’t you think?”

“Oh but you’ve just become so interesting!”

“I have an early morning, and so do you.” She shifts to nestle into a comfortable spot, to burrow a little more into the blankets and I follow suit. I put an arm around her in sisterly consolation. Her breathing slows its rhythm, the tight grip of the fist she’s put up on the pillow uncurling into a passive spread of fingers. Her breath pours out slowly between her parted lips, then draws in again in that song of sleep. I try to imagine this Mr. Deverell, fill in the rest of his body, but it’s the fingers I return to. Those delicate white fingers appraising me, running through my hair, stroking under my chin to tilt it up. The way he would have touched me if we had been the only two in the shop. Outside the ruckus of the street unchanging, squalling babies, men hollering at one another. And inside the oily, smoky smell of the fuel for the lamps, but it’s as though I have my eyes closed because I can’t see the man who’s touching me, only feel his fingers. My body rigid like a wild hare startled into hiding, rigid but quivering. To relax into his touch would be to admit the pleasure it stirs up.

54 July 10, 1852

He told you to wait till they doused the lights in the streets. He told you to light nothing, not even a candle, to come in the dark. Stepping out the front door was like stepping into a dark lake, the damp grass tangling between your toes the way algae would, your fingers scooping through the navy air, trying to find your way across the lawn, up abrasive wooden stairs. His arms when you came through the door, all he was was arms for the first few moments, their weight driving out your breath in a huff, his body swallowed by the charcoal darkness of the room. His cheek grazed against your neck, bristles on his chin prickling against your neck. The heat of his body stripping the night away from you.

The release of his arms, his hand a delicate shell of fingers cupping around yours, pulling you toward the bed with the blankets twisted into rope on its surface. He lets go, tosses the twists out of the sheets, spread them across the bed, awkward at this attempt towards domesticity.

The bed barely holds the two of you. You lie on the bed as though you’ve never done so before, your limbs don’t know how they should lie, should you be on your back, shift over to your side now. And on your side he’s joined you, his hand behind your neck. His lips just barely brushing yours at first as if he is tracing a whisper onto you before the words have fully formed. No sour beer breath this time, only hint of onion and garlic from supper, warm and wet as his mouth opens and yours opens in return, tongues gliding against each other. Your hands hesitant, deciding their next move, settling on his back, a light touch. The warmth of his skin through the shirt, you trace patterns with your fingers, spirals and zigzags. He tries to run his fingers through your hair but they catch there and he’s forced to pull them free. You don’t whimper as he tugs at your scalp, you don’t want him to know he is hurting you.

55 His fingers free, he moves them to the small of your back, tugging here and there at the fabric..

“Stop!” you say, afraid he’ll tear the fastenings. He draws back, face preparing to set into a sulk. “There’s buttons along the back, you’ll need to unfasten them. Be careful about it too, or we may as well have not bothered about being secretive.” He crouches behind, his fingers working at the loops, slipping them free of the buttons. The dress gapes open from the top few buttons he’s worked free, leaving your back exposed like new skin under a scab. All of the buttons undone, he tugs the dress away, throws it onto the floor. His hand on your shoulder forces you to turn toward him, kneeling there in front him in only your chemise and your petticoats.

“Where’s your corset?”

“I’ve stopped wearing it. Too much of nuisance.”

“I concur.”

You remain kneeling, look back over your shoulder at the husk of dress on the floor. A sudden desire to go back and retrieve it. To press it to your skin like gauze over a fresh wound.

He can see too much of you and now there’s nothing holding him back.

“Well?” he says. There’s no choice but to return to your place by his side. The warmth you’d left there a comfort a least. He strokes along your arm, then up the curve of your side where you’re ticklish and you have to hold in a laugh because he’d be insulted by it. His palm smearing from your belly up to your breasts, his hand cupping one gently. You’re reminded of the way people buy tomatoes at the grocers, checking for the quality of the product. Is it because

56 your bodies aren’t pressed up together like before that you don’t want to put your arms around him? It seems like he doesn’t really need you to do anything, only lie here and be inspected.

He draws away to sit on the edge of the bed, his back to you. The rattle of his belt as he undoes it and the rustling of his clothes as he pulls them off. The pale glow from one of the windows catches on his back. You can see the line of his vertebrae in the contrast of light and shadow. You lean forward behind him, your fingers tracing, mapping the bones beneath the skin.

“What are you doing?” he laughs.

You pull your hand away, clasp it with the other and clench the both of them between your knees. “I could see the bones of your back under your skin. Do you ever think about that?

What your own skeleton looks like underneath all the sinew and muscle?”

“What an odd girl you are.” His palm frames your cheek and he kisses you, his arm pressing against the bare flesh of yours. He presses his weight against you, leans you back against the knot of pillows, straddles you. His kneeling legs are parallel lines along the outside of yours, bridging you in. He tugs your petticoats and your chemise up, rolling them until they bunch up around your waist and gather behind the small of your back, an uncomfortable lump beneath you.

He leans in to whisper into your ear, “It’s time.”

His knuckles knock up against your inner thighs as he fumbles for himself to enter you.

He’s slow about it at first, soft, wet tip of him pressing in. The feeling strange, but not horrid as you thought it would be. Then you want him to stop; the tension of skin pulling tight, resisting him, the twinge of it breaking, release, the stinging still present, but lesser now. Instead, the burn of the friction of him moving faster within you.

57 Notice for the first time your right ankle has become tangled in the sheets. They’ve twisted around tight and pull your foot at an awkward angle. You wiggle, trying to break free, but the sheets only pull snugger, your ankle cramping. His breathing ragged and loud, his face above you hard to see in the darkness, but his eyes closed, mouth gaping open. And then he tenses, whole body rigid. And the warmth comes, the feeling of something oozing in as he grasps your shoulders, fingernails digging into you.

The wet release as he leaves you, clambers off, breathing heavily, pulls his wrist to his forehead to wipe sweat away. You’re free to sit up now, free your ankle and rub the cramp away.

Then you lie down again, back facing him. He presses his chest against your back, his warm, damp body sticking to yours, the musk of his sweat hanging in the air. He wraps his arms around you, kisses you on the back of the neck and nuzzles his face in.

Between your legs the dampness still. Reach your fingers down and feel it, thick and warm, like mucus almost. Know somehow that it’s from him, it wasn’t a part of you before. You feel sure of it. Your wetness never felt like this. You should want to wipe it away, but there’s a strange sense of pride to it. Knowing that what you’ve experienced is forbidden for you. And what he’s left behind, it’s almost as though you’ve taken something from him. Like the voodoo the flower girl told you of. Gather something from a person and it gives you power over them.

You, with this remnant of him between your legs.

58 April 3, 1849

The morning air tastes sour on my tongue. I can’t tell if it’s anxiety or if I’m tasting the scents my nose catches: rotting rubbish, sewage and smoke. It’s a sharply cold morning, even with gloves on I’m forced to rub my hands together every now and then or draw them into the sleeves of my overcoat.

Mrs. Tozer informed me yesterday that Sarah had finished the bonnet, that today I was to deliver it, and so this morning I set out with my sketches, and in my visiting dress, the finest of the three I own. It’s in a cerulean silk which contrasts rather well with my red hair. Leaving the house in the dress required a great deal of scheming on my part. Mama would have bombarded me with questions had she seen me slip out the door wearing it. Lydia had to be talked into helping at first, but as she assisted me with all the petticoats and fastenings her excitement was clear from all the things she whispered to me.

“His mother is bound to confuse for a higher class in this dress. And if we plait your hair just so he’s certain to find you stunning.”

She provided the distraction as I slipped out the door, asking Mama if there was anything she needed picked up from the chemists, or perhaps if she ought to pick something up from the greengrocer’s.

With Lydia there to whisper encouragement back in our room, the day had seemed one I could triumph in, but the further I draw from our home the more unsteady my steps become.

Earlier my boot snagged on one of the cobblestones, the rough edge scarring the leather. As I caught myself from falling, my stomach gave a lurch, and after that didn’t settle again, my breakfast writhing around within like a mass of earthworms. The voices of the shopkeepers, the

59 flower girls and the wandering salesmen have lost all clarity, are a droning hum in the back of my head as I pass through them. The only tangible sound is the air as it rushes in and out of my lungs, stinging them with its mixture of frost and smoke.

I’m a blur of bright blue in Mrs. Tozer’s shop window. Drawing closer to the reflection I run my fingers down my hips, my gloves sliding over the silk. My hands inside the gloves, numb and shaking. Mrs. Tozer takes in my dress, and the sophisticated way Lyddy’s plaited my hair and nods in satisfaction, then notices the roll of papers clasped in my hand.

“What do you have there?” she asks.

“I do sketches sometimes. I thought maybe I might bring them.”

“Don’t show them unless asked,” she tells me. They might never ask me. The earthworms in my stomach are twisting together now,a seamless, fleshy weight.

Mrs. Tozer hands me an apron from a drawer in her imposing desk, “Don’t want you ruining that fine dress of yours do we? We won’t be leaving until three so we may as well put you to work until then eh?” I tie on the apron, the shop’s predictable presence in the routine of my life unable to comfort me as I thought it might. It’s altered somehow, as though it were a changeling child, identical to the real thing, but with a foreign quality. At first I can’t say why, but then I realize it’s the silence. The girls are always chatting as they work, but at the moment none of them says a word. There is only the metallic note of scissors cutting through thin silk, the clattering of fingers hunting through trays for needles or bobbins. None of the girls look my way, but I know that all of them have been listening. I lay down my sketches beside my work station, tug off my gloves and drop them on the stained surface of the desk. I am now the shop curiosity, far more fascinating than Jeanette, or Alice with her numerous suitors, or Sarah with

60 that mad brother of hers who had to be locked up. They are silent now, but I can bet as soon as

Mrs. Tozer and I leave the shop this afternoon it will be choruses of: “Did you see the dress?”

“They can’t just be delivering a bonnet, her all dressed up like that.” “And what about those rolled up sheets of paper? Sketches she said. Sketches of what?” They will never ask though because that would mean admitting they’re curious about me and they wouldn’t want to give me that kind of attention.

I thread a needle and attach trim to a bonnet, making tiny, even stitches. Delicate ladies make delicate stitches: Mama’s voice in the back of my mind. Her lessons on lady-like conduct: never let your back meet the back of the chair; respond to all questions politely, but briefly, nobody likes a girl who chatters on; always be obliging with a sweet expression on your face. It is always hard to tell when this “sweet expression” is achieved, I don’t believe I have ever really mastered it. I think that maybe some of us were just born with sweet faces, like Lydia’s, and that mine will always be sour.

In the scant few moments we’re given for lunch I barely taste the dinner rolls I’ve brought with me. My mouth fills with a dry paste of over-chewed bread. I’ve been taking bite after bite, but not swallowing. I swallow the paste down, my mouth dry and sticky. The last dinner roll sits on my worktable, but I can’t bring myself to eat it. My stomach rumbles, but the anxiety has quelled my appetite.

The last few hours after lunch are useless for work. Having to stand at the table, fixed to the spot, is driving me mad. It would be much better to pace the room, to dart back and forth, wear off this excess energy. Instead it vibrates within me while I rehearse dialogues with the imagined Deverells in my mind. In every one I am the charismatic, witty Lizzie, this Lizzie

61 rarely ever makes an appearance in real life. In the seclusion of my imagination I can make up all the quippy dialogue I like, but in the moment it will be a mad fumble for the right words, it always is.

A tap on my shoulder and Mrs. Tozer is standing behind me, “Come on, it’s time.” She hands me the bonnet, carefully packaged in its box. I struggle to grasp both the box and my roll of drawings at the same time, settle on tucking the roll carefully under my arm while holding the box in both hands.

Mrs. Tozer leads me over to the door, then looks back to study me again. “Goodness,” she says in a harsh whisper, “You look pale as anything. You need a pinch my dear.” I have to hold myself from jerking back as her prune-like fingers nip at both cheeks several times, bringing out the colour in them. She withdraws and surveys her work, if the smarting in my cheeks is any indication, they ought to be bright red by now.

“Better, better,” she says. “You might do that again yourself on the carriage ride over.

And remember to breathe girl.” She looks out the window, “Ah, here we are.”

Mrs. Tozer with her firm grip guides me up into the waiting carriage, and with a groan she pulls her plump body up after me. She sits facing the back of the carriage. With the muffled sound of the reins slapping the rumps of the horses the carriage lurches forward, and my stomach with it. As we pick up speed the jarring and bumping over the uneven streets makes me clench my jaw till it aches, the heels of my palms jammed against the seat cushion for stability.

Across from me, Mrs. Tozer reaches out with a palm as pudgy as a pin cushion and pats my knee reassuringly, “This’ll be an adventure for you won’t it?” I smile in response. “Don’t forget how important the Deverells are as customers, best behavior now.” I nod. “But there’s no

62 need for me to worry really is there? Such a quiet girl to begin with. And in such a lovely dress too. I can’t imagine how they wouldn’t be impressed with you.”

The Deverell house looms as we step from the carriage, an imposing building of stone, with a garret on the far right of it. Before coming to the front door we walk through the dried winter remnants of what looks as though it might be a well-manicured garden in the summer.

The remains of sweet pea vines hang from a trellis, gripping it with golden curlicues shooting from their stalks. Even the dead things are beautiful here. In the summer the perfume of the flowers must hang rich and thick in the air of this place. I imagine crushing my nose into the sweet pea blooms on a warm July visit here, filling my nostrils with their heady scent. The air around these houses is fresh and sweet, while back at Kent Place there’s the reek of emptied chamber pots, and putrifying vegetables. There’s no sanctuary between us and the street as there is for the Deverells.

A crisply dressed servant answers the door. Mama had always hoped that one day we would be able to employ one as well, but for now whenever visitors called on us it is she who answers the door. She’s made the simple action of it into a theatre piece. Whoever is calling on us watches the door swing back delicately and then Mama strides two paces forward, her shoulders lifted up and back, her chin always at the perfect angle. If someone were to have a protractor to measure the angle between chin and neck, I’m sure it would be the same number of degrees each time. Next Mama settles her skirts around her with a flourish and allows for a dramatic pause before addressing the guest. It is the contrast between the gentle opening of the door and Mama’s swift, almost aggressively regal approach to the door that makes the whole scene so effective.

63 She rises before any of us in the morning to stoke the range, and by the time the rest of us are awake she’ll already be polishing away at the silverware, or mending a shirt, or any one of the endless tasks that stretch out before her. We help of course, scrubbing and scouring dishes, washing the floor, whatever work might be done when we’re not away from the house at our employers’. Our cleaning is never quite up to Mama’s standard though. She wants a house that looks as though it was cleaned by several servants whether she has them or not.

Mrs. Tozer accompanies me through the massive front door and up a flight of stairs to the drawing room where Mrs. Deverell and her son rise to meet us. I think of Mama’s hands on my own, instructing me in my curtsies, how to delicately grip the fabric of the dress, how to bend my knees and dip down and back in a slow, graceful movement; Mama teaching us all to be ladies and then sending us off to labour in the shops.

Mrs. Tozer walks before me and curtsies to the Deverells and then beckons me forward,

“Mrs. Deverell, Mr. Deverell, may I present to you Miss Elizabeth Siddall.” As the pear shape of

Mrs. Tozer’s body moves away to reveal the Deverells I get my first real glance at Mr. Deverell.

He’s very smartly dressed in a well cut suit, a plum neck tie is tucked into his vest. That streak of purple at his throat decidedly eccentric, something an artist would wear.

While his mother curtsies, he bows his head to me, trying to make eye contact, but I glance down to the floor. I grip the fabric of my silk dress, curling my fingers into it, afraid it will slip from my hands, afraid I will make a fool of myself, but my curtsey is smooth and graceful in return.

64 I approach Mrs. Deverell with the bonnet box, “Your delivery Mrs. Deverell,” and as instructed I ask, “Would you like for me to ensure that the fitting has been done to your specifications?”

“Of course,” she replies. I set down my roll of sketches beside a dainty chair with a cushioned back and place the bonnet box on an oak end table. The bonnet is light in my hands as

I lift it gently from the stiff card stock of the box. Mrs. Deverell removes her own bonnet from her stiff, grey hair, and I settle the new one upon her head, tilting it back a little so that it frames her face just as Mrs. Tozer has taught me the week before. Her perfume is a reek of violets, and

I’m so close to her that the grains of powder make-up dusted across her face are visible, collecting in the creases around her eyes. She glares at the wall across from us where a rural landscape hangs as I study the bonnet once more, and then gather the ribbons in my hands to tie them under her chin. I have never dressed a stranger before, only helped my sisters with their corsets and the younger ones with their bootlaces until they learned to tie them themselves. Mrs.

Tozer’s lessons in the shop come back to me though; I tie the ribbon and then quickly slip a finger between its smooth surface and the sagging flesh below Mrs. Deverell’s chin. I try to separate myself from the task, let my fingers do the work, while her sour breath hits my cheek. I finish and step back, and I see her lips twist to the side in thought. She’s appraising me, her eyes appearing not to, but her mouth giving it away. All the formality of fitting this bonnet as though it were the real reason for me coming here when we all know it’s not. She just wants an opportunity to make sure I am a suitable and proper young lady for their son to paint. Surely it is the men who sully their models and not the other way around.

65 Mrs. Deverell turns from me and minces towards a mirror to take in her reflection, “Yes, I think this will do just fine.”

“It looks very striking on you Mrs. Deverell.” The flattery she expects to hear.

“Well,” says Mrs. Deverell, “I feel that we should get right to the heart of the matter. Miss

Siddall, I’m sure you’re aware of why we’ve asked you here; I see no reason why we ought to dance around the subject for half an hour when our proposal is perfectly clear. My son is a very accomplished artist and would like you to be a model for a painting he is in the midst of. If there is any question in your mind about the nature of your work, let me assure you that Walter is a very honorable young man, and to give you further comfort either myself or one of his sisters will be in the studio regularly.” She pauses; like my mother she knows the power behind this, how it will make her the dominant one in the conversation. I do not allow a smile, only foolish people go about smiling all the time, Mama tells me. A smile must be used with intention and at the right moment. My lips remain in a firm line, my eyes downcast as if being demure when really my gaze falls on the sketches, still leaned against the chair. Why is the senior Mr. Deverell not here? I may as well have not even brought them along, now they will only make me look foolish.

As if she can sense my weakness, Mrs. Deverell cuts her silence short with the one question I hoped she would not ask, “That roll of papers you’ve set beside the chair, what are they?”

“Sketches, Mrs. Deverell. I’ve often drawn in my own leisure, and I wanted to bring them along to show my own interest in the profession.” I lift my eyes slightly from the floor, Mr.

Deverell is leaning back against a massive writing desk in an almost petulant fashion, both his

66 legs and arms crossed, those long, white fingers drumming along his wool-wrapped upper arm.

He tilts his head to the side in curiosity, his lips curl upward in amusement.

“Well that wasn’t necessary was it? You needn’t have any artistic experience just to pose as a model my dear.” I draw in my bottom lip and bite hard, refusing the embarrassment burning into my cheeks. Her brows draw together in disdain, my silk dress which seemed to glow on me this morning dull to my eyes now, the fabric is wrinkling and withering, dropping off me like petals until I am back in the stained green dress I wear to work, its hem a thread-bare raw edge from dragging along the cobblestones. I don’t look up from my dress again.

“Hold on now, that’s not necessarily true.” His voice is higher than I would have expected, and he rushes through the next few sentences, “So many models don’t understand what it is we’re trying to achieve, they are simply mindless puppets. But every now and again there will be a few remarkable ones that truly understand the nature of the work, who have an eye for composition, who seem to have a sense of what we are after, who really capture the spirit of the thing, bring it to life.” All I can see is his smartly polished boots, I refuse to raise my glance any higher. He’s only pleased that I might have some artistic skill because it could be useful to him.

He’ll never teach me anything then, he won’t see the point in it.

“May I see them?” he asks. His glossy black boots thud toward me across the oriental rug and then there’s the sound of a rustle of paper as he picks up my sketches and unrolls them. I dare not watch his for fear of what expressions I might find there, instead I fixate on that plum cravat, the way it hugs his neck and slides smoothly down into his vest like a tongue. He will find the sketches amusing no doubt, some girl scribbling things in her room, no proper training at all save what her own mother gave her. I find that I’ve raised my thumb to my mouth, that I’m

67 worrying at a hangnail there. I drop my hand back down resolutely, force away the desire to snatch back what is mine. He couldn’t be bothered to ask permission to see them and now he will mock me.

“They are a bit rough, and could use a bit more work, but they actually show a great deal of promise, Miss Siddall.” I allow myself to meet his gave now, his eyes hazel with flecks of gold. I think of what Lydia told me, about the things you can tell by looking into a man’s eyes, and fight the urge to look away, afraid of what I might discover there. He begins rolling the sketches back up again. “You must wonder why my father isn’t here don’t you?”

“I can’t say that I noticed.”

“He works in the School of Design you know.”

“I wasn’t aware of that. Does he teach there?”

“No, he works in the administrative end of things.”

“Does he?”

“He doesn’t have much influence there though, not that could be of any help to anyone hoping to get in. We have acquaintances sometimes who hope he might help them gain entrance into the classical painting program there. A woman once thought he could help her with that.”

“A woman!” Mrs. Tozer lets out a hearty laugh. “Well that’s just absurd isn’t it! But you must know how grateful I am for your father finding me the workers he has. They turn out such fine milliner’s assistants at that school.”

“I’ll be sure to let him know of your gratitude Mrs. Tozer,” Mr. Deverell says to her. “As for women entering the visual arts programs, it’s unfortunate they are not given a chance really.

So much talent going to waste. I’ve known of artists who will teach those women willing to

68 learn you know.” He hands me back my drawings, his hand brushes against my own. He’s only saying these things to taunt me. It’s merely a game. All women are a game to men, dainty little dolls they can break when they choose. Well he’ll find I’m not so dainty as he might like. If he’s going to hint at these offers then I’ll make him stick to his word.

“Those women must have a bit too much time on their hands if you ask me,” says Mrs.

Deverell, sweeping across the room. “Miss Siddall seems much more reasonable about her interest. It makes a pleasant hobby for a woman, but the school is only for those training to have a career as artists, and they shouldn’t let hobbyists get in the way of the men who are truly serious about their work. We are off topic at any rate.” The tips of her black boots halt in front of me, “My son tells me that the work, as you would imagine, can involve holding poses for up to half an hour sometimes for the more experienced models. It can be quite taxing to the body, would you be strong enough to endure that do you think?”

“I would think so.”

“And Mrs. Tozer has given a good character reference for you and has told us you are polite and obliging, and more knowledgeable about etiquette than we might expect you to be.”

Mama’s training coming to my aid once more; perhaps I would not make a disagreeable daughter-in-law for them after all.

“There’s still the matter of broaching this offer with your parents. I would want to assure them that the position we would be hiring you for would be respectable and discuss the wage with them.”

“If you were to call upon our home, I’m sure my mother would be happy to entertain you at any time you should wish. I will make sure she is aware of it.”

69 “You may give her my card then,” she pulls out a slab of calling cards from a drawer in the desk that Mr. Deverell was leaning on previously. With a flourish of her quill pen she scratches out a time on the back of one of the cards and hands it to me. The paper is of high quality, thick and textured. On the front is her name in a luxurious flowing font and on the back she has written “Wednesday, three o’clock in the afternoon.” Wednesday, two days from now.

Mama has a collection of a few calling cards, but not like this one. The card alone might be enough.

70 April 12, 1849

I’m not even half-way up the Deverell’s front walk for my first session when the door opens a tad, the angular face of a young woman peeks through the slim opening at me, then the door opens all the way. Her boots tick against the stone walkway as she makes a mad dash for me.

“Hurry!” she says, “He mustn’t see.” And she twists her arm through mine and pulls me down a path that hugs around the side of the house, our bodies jostling each other, the two of us nearly tripping over each other’s skirts.

She comes to a halt in the backyard, hunches over to regain her breath with shallow panting. While still bent over, her elbows resting on her knees, she looks up with a half-smile at one of the windows on the second floor.

“Who mustn’t — ” I begin, and then she’s straightened up and is shushing me and dragging me over to a shed in the back of the yard that’s badly in need of a fresh white-washing.

The inside of the shed is gloomy compared to the harsh light of the outdoors and it takes a moment for my eyes to adjust. Before they do I sneeze loudly, the air is potent with dust and smells mildewy. Is this one of their maids? Has she gone batty on them and decided to abduct one of their guests?

I turn to study this woman, who must only be a handful of years older than myself. The square angle of her jaw makes her look somewhat boyish, and her hair, which could easily be mistaken for black, is really a very dark brown. She has it slicked back into a tight braid which has been wound into a bun. The hairstyle makes her widow’s peak stand out and is altogether

71 too severe for her features. Her mouth is down-turned at the edges which makes her look as though she is always scowling.

“So sorry!” she says, “You must think this all very unusual. But Papa doesn’t know. He wouldn’t approve you see. So we’ve gone about the whole thing in secret. Mama decided it would be preferable that way.”

“Oh.” I say. “And you are?”

“I’m Walter’s, I mean Mr. Deverell’s elder sister, Margaretta.” We exchange curtsies.

“And this is?”

“His studio for the moment. It’s not much to look at I know, but it’s a secret as well.”

His studio. I don’t know that I had any strong preconceptions about what an artist’s studio ought to look like. Some obvious evidence of an artist at work would be a part of it though.

Perhaps splatters of paint on the floor, perhaps the smell of some chemical used for making the paint, but mildew is the only thing I can smell, and the dust is so thick in the air I fear I shall sneeze again soon. If this is an artist’s studio then the corner of the room I share with Lydia, with the pencils and paper curled up with petticoats, might be considered a studio as well.

We’re standing in the middle of a stripped-down room with a jumble of furniture and odds and ends lining the wall. Or a jumble of furniture is what I imagine must be beneath the stained throw sheets that cover everything. Here and there something will peek out: the dusty corner of a dresser, half of the back of a chair whose upholstery has been ripped quite badly. It must be a collection of the things that have grown too tired for the house and have been abandoned here. The building was probably one for a gardener to live in at one point, but, other than the clutter against the wall, it is completely bare, the walls included.

72 The door swings open with a wail and Mr. Deverell is standing there, gasping for breath as he splutters to Margaretta, “He only just left. Damn him! He was supposed to be in a coach two hours ago. How typical that he’d decide to stay and work in his office on today of all days.”

He only now takes notice of me, “Oh Miss Siddall!” He takes a few paces forward reaches out a hand as if to shake mine, and then realizes what he’s done and yanks his hand away, his feet stutter backward and he bows instead. Not quite so sure of himself without his mother in the room it appears. I curtsey in return.

Margaretta settles herself in a chair against the back wall, while Mr. Deverell begins speaking about modeling with me, “Good modeling is all about being in the right state of mind.

More of a meditation maybe. To really transform, to grasp the character, you almost go into a trance. You’ll train your mind for it, to stand the long stretches of holding a pose. It’s not a calling for everyone, but seeing you at the shop . . . Well I knew this is what you were truly meant for. You have this grace, a striking charm about you. You were wasted in the dim back corner of that milliner’s.” He seems to fight to find the words that will fill the sentences the way he wants them to. His fingers, as he talks, splay out, long and slim, for emphasis and wriggle in frustration when words won’t come fast enough for him. He almost says it outright, that he is my rescuer, and it is true that he is in a way. Although I think he imagines himself a far grander knight than I do. A Lancelot perhaps, when I see before me a Galahad: a sweet, sheltered boy, charmingly innocent who thinks he can go about shaking a lady’s hand. Those constantly communicating hands of his, they look soft and smooth. My own have known more of life than his.

73 It’s odd them keeping all of this from the senior Mr. Deverell. It doesn’t seem at all respectful and had Mrs. Deverell had not inquired after hiring me, I’m not sure I could’ve agreed to it. Even sitting here listening to Mr. Deverell, as kind as he seems, I wonder if I am simply a toy for him. There’s no canvas of his anywhere in sight. Mrs. Deverell might be entirely unaware of his true intentions towards me, or even worse still, he might be a horrid painter and

I’ll learn nothing of any value from him.

Mr. Deverell carries on with his lecture, sitting so close to the edge of the stool he perches on that I fear he’ll fall off, “By the end of the day I hope to have taught you the pose for the piece I’m working on. It’s not a difficult one, not one that will tire your body. You are used to such hard labour, but if I hadn’t known that — you are just so frail, or not frail but delicate. Be sure to tell me if it becomes too much for you, if I’m exhausting you. Most of the women I paint, well they’ve been trained. They are professional models, it’s their profession. I have seen the others, my friends I mean, the other artists with whom I spend time, I’ve watched them guiding those who are still new at the profession. But I myself, I’ve never trained a model. It will be a new experience for both of us. When I saw you in that shop, it was your eyes I think. I could imagine all the emotions you could capture with them. The look in the eyes is the most important. Those lovely gray eyes, they will have to have such a rich expression in them, all the emotion of the woman you will portray — but I am getting ahead of myself. I must teach you the nature of the craft first. We will build up your stamina with poses of a more simple nature to begin with. Five minutes will be the goal for today I think.”

Though he is teaching, giving a lesson on how to model, I can feel his eyes mapping me, charting my every angle. For the painting most likely, but maybe not. Are my eyes beautiful?

74 I’d never stopped to consider it. I suppose they have a sort of woeful luminosity to them that a man might be drawn to. I see it sometimes when I look into mirrors.

The way he talks about modeling certainly makes this whole ruse seem quite convincing.

Holding a pose for five minutes though? That’s hardly a challenge. Surely five minutes is not that long of a time to simply sit or stand in whatever position they must put you in. “If I were very experienced at this, how long would you say I would have to pose for?” I ask him. What if he is expecting something more? These high wages for so little. His eyes might be searching my body, imagining its translation onto canvas, but what if instead they examine in the way he wishes his hands could examine? A strange sensation, his eyes sweeping over me, as though his fingers were lightly tracing over any exposed flesh. The soft pad of his index finger sketching the line of my collar bone, just brushing the fine hair there, making it stand on end, barely making contact with the skin.

I hear the end of him answering my question, and realize I have missed the important bit.

“. . . any more than that and you would find yourself entirely exhausted,” he tells me, and his fingers disappear into his pockets. Imagine instead them following the curve of my jaw, running along the slab of bone that builds the line of it.

“Please excuse me, how long did you say again? I missed hearing it,” If only a blush would come, a flush of shame, that’s what would be proper, but my skin feels like a block of wood. I imagine his nails planing across my skin and shaping it, twisting away from myself, releasing for him.

75 “Half an hour,” he says, pulling a piece of chalk out of his pocket. “Please don’t make me repeat everything I say. We have an awful lot to cover and there’s no time for that.” The fingers drop away.

“Now, to begin I should explain to you about marking I suppose.” He holds out the piece of chalk, “Marking makes your task easier, allows you to see where to place yourself after a break. I do the marking beforehand, when we begin for the day. I break your body down into segments, and mark the position of each. Here, I’ll give you a little demonstration. Say, that you will be posing in this chair,” He pulls a battered oak chair out from under one of the throw sheets at the side of the room, sets it down before me, “Go on then, give it go.” He stands awaiting me by the chair, rolling the chalk back and forth between his fingers, coating them in a fine white dust. That fine dust leaving smudged white fingerprints as he smooths the pleats of my skirts.

“We’ll say for this pose that you sit in the front left corner of the chair, your left foot further forward than the right.” I adjust myself accordingly, awkward in my bulky skirts which make me unsteady at the edge of the chair. Perhaps I will lose my balance entirely and fall to the floor, and what then? Would he laugh at me? Dismiss me entirely for failing at the simple act of sitting on chair? A grating hiss comes from the floor, I hold back from jumping as he makes fast, horizontal slashes with the chalk in front of my left foot and then the right.

Rising from the ground he says, “There, we’ve marked your foot position, and now we mark your position on the chair.” He reaches his hand forward, is about to draw a line beside my right thigh and then looks over to Margaretta, eyes to a book she has brought along. It’s a battered copy of something, the golden letters of the title obscured through the wear and tear. A well-loved book. Vanity Fair perhaps. He reconsiders, “Maybe you had better mark it yourself.

76 One on either side, Miss Siddall. On the left and the right of you. And since you are sitting at the edge of the chair, another one behind.” He passes me the chalk, his face a bit flushed, or do I only imagine this?

“The placement of your head is important too. It’s not something that can be marked of course. But there’s a trick to help you with that, and all that you need to do is look to the wall and find a spot to fix on. This is once you have the rest of your body posed of course. You look to the wall after finding the pose, and search out a way of marking exactly where your eyes meet it. And then, whenever you return to the pose, all that’s required is finding that place with your eyes and letting the rest of your head follow. If we adjust you like so for instance,” He lightly places his fingers under my chin, begins to tilt it upwards. His breath with its hint of garlic and onions breezing against my cheek. The tips of his fingers are smooth and warm on my skin. He hardly touches me, but it feels as though he has branded me, the pads of his fingers burnt into my skin. His fingers linger a moment longer than they need to.

“Walter!” says Margaretta, in a low, warning tone. The warm patches his fingers left feel cold, exposed. How long might he have held his hands there if she had said nothing?

“I’m posing her.” Walter says, his fingers dropping from my face, that distance returning between us now.

“Are you?”

“If you’re suggesting I can do that without touching her-”

“No of course not. It’s not the touching of her, it’s how you touch her.” Me and my chastity in third person, as if I’m not in the room, or not a real person in the room anyways. A

77 doll, he moves and arranges and she guards against him discovering that I might be flesh and blood.

“I think maybe those books are a bad influence on you. They inflate your imagination,” he says, staring her down into submission. Now her features really do pull into a scowl, a far more sour look than I could have imagined, and she brings her book back before her face.

Walter sighs and returns to me. “Look straight out from where I have positioned your face. Find a spot.” I gaze out from my lifted chin. A blank white wall. That’s all. A test of some sort? An incomprehensible one if it is. “Hold the pose, just for a moment. We’ll see how you do.” He steps back. The sharp edge of the chair digging into my upper thigh can no longer be ignored, the way it pushes against flesh, crushing it. I picture the skin beginning to bruise into a dark shadow on my thigh, and what would a bruise say? How could one explain a bruise from sitting on a chair? I begin to edge myself back so slowly even I wonder if I am making the movements, but I feel the hard line of the chair drag away from that sensitive spot bit by bit.

“You’re moving about. Don’t you feel yourself doing so? Look down at your marks.

You’ve gone over the back one.”

I say nothing of my discomfort, attempt instead to look over my shoulder for the chalk line. Mr. Deverell gives a snort of amusement, “Haven’t I already said that you’re covering the line now? Surely looking does nothing.” How can I be the fool here? I see no canvas, no proof that this Mr. Deverell is actually an artist, and yet I am being treated as the amateur. The man doesn’t even have a proper studio, sneaks around under his father’s nose like a little boy. Even he’s admitted he’s never trained a model before, surely other artists wouldn’t treat me so.

78 “Stand up, find your marks and we’ll try again.” His eyes are no longer on my body when he speaks, but on the floor instead. I rise to my feet and look back to the marks, the one behind me smudged but still present. I settle myself within their limits, and then place my feet as they were before.

“Now for the angle of your face. Look for your mark.” A blank white wall, my eyes pretending a search across, but there was nothing there before for me to pick up on, so how could there be now? “No, that’s not quite it, you must not have found the right spot, keep looking.”

This is absurd, but I hold my silence, continue making little adjustments. “You did pick one did you not? I’m not giving you advice simply to have you ignore it.”

I pretend shame, eyes angled at the floor. When they chastise you, this is what they want.

A posture of submission. Let him figure out his own mistake. He can make a fool of himself all on his own.

“Well?” he says.

When they get this way it becomes impossible for them to admit their mistakes, but if he wants an answer then I’ll give him one. “I’m afraid I’m not really sure what you’re asking of me. The walls are blank.”

He looks behind him and sees the truth of what I’ve said, any authority he called into himself during his lesson, floods away. He rubs his hands together nervously, “Well . . . I hadn’t thought . . . I mean surely you could remember how far up the wall you were looking when I set your position, that can’t be too much to ask.”

79 “Oh for goodness sake, Walter,” Margaretta says from behind me. I chance a glance back to her; her book closed on her lap, she’s probably been watching the entirety of our exchange.

“How could she possibly remember how high up a wall to look?”

Mr. Deverell sets his jaw, “I manage it when I pose for Gabriel.”

“And doesn’t Gabriel’s studio have brick walls? You never want to admit when you’re wrong.”

“That is enough Margaretta. Last I remember, you were not an expert on the practice of being a model. Why not make yourself useful and get us some refreshments. I think it’s time

Miss Siddall had a break at any rate.”

Margaretta rises, hiding a smile behind a gloved hand, “Very well Walter.” She gives me a slight nod of her head as she leaves. Hadn’t Mrs. Deverell better come in to replace her? I pause, watching the door, but no one else comes. We are quite alone now.

Mr. Deverell sits back on his stool with a sigh and looks over at me, “I am sorry for that.

She’s the eldest and she never lets me forget it, but you’re quite right, what I was asking you to do was impossible. We’ll have to find a way to mark the wall for you.”

“I would very much appreciate that Mr. Deverell.” I don’t know what to do with my hands. It feels sloppy to let them dangle downward, hanging over the sides of the chair, so I fold them together on my lap. Mr. Deverell hasn’t said anything more, but I can tell he’s planning to,

I can see him in my periphery, even though I pretend to study my cuticles and the jagged skin around my nails. The mark of my work at Mrs. Tozer’s. With enough time away from working there perhaps the skin will and I’ll have the hands of a lady.

80 Mr. Deverell clears his throat, he’s been resting his chin on his fist, but now he leans back, fidgets about on the stool before he speaks, “You could call me Walter you know.”

“And why would I do that?”

“It would be more friendly I think.”

“I wasn’t aware I was here to be friendly, Mr. Deverell.” His lips thin in irritation and I regret my words. He pulls his lower lip in, working it between his teeth. The smell of soap flakes and leather radiates from him. Most men smell of rancid sweat, a stench that makes me eager to put distance between us, but with him I want to catch the scent at its source, for my nostrils to be overwhelmed with him. Where his hair ends at the nape of his neck there are a few freckles, making him seem even more boyish. I could nuzzle my face up against them. These thoughts rush to my head, so unexpected and I’m half terrified he can tell what they are. Back to the skin of my hands, my fingernails picking now at the frayed bits of flesh, trying to tidy the look of my fingers. But I give up soon, the task too painful and perhaps disgusting to Mr.

Deverell.

The hardwood floor has lost much of its varnish. Gray, weathered wood showing through the honey-colored coating in several places. There’s several places where the wood has been scraped and damaged, from moving the furniture about most likely. This must be why Walter —

Mr. Deverell is able to work here without detection from his father.

“And I suppose you wouldn’t like for me to call you by your first name?” he asks.

His request seems so innocent, so unassuming, but isn’t this how they always come across? That’s what I’ve been told, even the girls at the shop say it. How you think you can trust

81 them and then it changes. How you have to set down rules or they’ll run right over you in their eagerness. “I would prefer it, if for now at least, you would still call me Miss Siddall.”

“Just for now? So things might change then?” he asks, looking hopeful.

“Perhaps, when we’ve worked together longer. When I get to know you.” That might encourage him too much. Cruel to do that.

“Of course. I understand. But you are enjoying it so far? Being a model?”

I think of my sore leg, my awkward position on the chair earlier. Walter mocking me.

Then I imagine the way the room will be set up once he is painting me. His easel far from me, the canvas on it facing away, hiding its magic from me. On a worn wooden table beside it a roll of brushes, a palette, a few jars of paint. It’s been so long since those times I did watercolours with my mother in the garden. The brush, graceful and light in my hand, its tip wet with colour swooping across an empty canvas, the image building in slow stages, first only in blurry outlines and then detail dabbed in later. “Of course. I enjoy it a great deal.”

There is a knocking at the door and Walter rises to help his sister. She hands me a cup of steaming Earl Grey with a sugar cookie balanced on the saucer. “Any sugar or cream?” she asks me. I shake my head, raise the cup to my lips and sip. The cup and saucer are so thin they are practically translucent. The edges, coated with a thin sheen of gold, are scalloped. The pattern of the saucer and the cups are hand-painted violas, the canary yellow markings on the purple blooms make them as expressive as faces. It’s a remarkable pattern, so detailed it’s as though someone has picked the flowers fresh and fused them to the side of the cup. How small the brushes must be, how steady the hands must have to be to do such detailed work. I can only imagine Margaretta’s trepidation having to carry them across the stones of the pathway, edges of

82 them sticking up like crooked teeth. If she tripped, or took one false step, the delicate cups reduced to shards on first impact.

My mother has always been so proud of our china, with its ivy pattern twining about the circumference of the saucer, running along the edges of the cups, but in comparison our ivy seems clumsily painted, the lines, as I can remember them, smudged and crooked in some places.

I am happy she cannot see the china here.

I take another sip, feel the heat of the rich tea sting my tongue as it slides along it. The three of us sit there nibbling our cookies. Margaretta smiles, passes me the napkin she’s forgotten about and I spread it across my lap. The cookies are soft and fluffy, break apart almost too easily, covering my lap with crumbs, so I’m grateful for the napkin.

“Well,” says Walter, “Let’s get back at it shall we?”

An hour later I find myself relaxing out of the first pose I’ve held for nearly ten minutes.

That’s how long Walter says it was anyways, but it felt like half an hour. My eyes water from the exertion of staring at the black dot Walter dabbed on the wall for me to mark my position. My lower back has a gnawing ache to it, and my knees crack as I stand. My one leg tingles, asleep, a weird numbness to my foot. I try to stamp it out. My body feels the same level of exhaustion as if I’d been working at the milliner’s all day and yet all I’ve been doing is sitting.

“A bit better,” Walter says. “Maybe tomorrow we’ll actually get to the pose you’ll be doing for the painting. I didn’t imagine this’d take so long, but we’ll just have to work harder.”

I nod, massaging my stiff wrists.

* * *

83 There is a routine I have for myself when I return home from Mrs. Tozer’s during the winter months. I make my way through Papa’s display cases first. He runs his cutlery business from the front of our house, and keeps his finest sets in cases by the windows, the knives like silver fangs glittering with their handles of ivory, and forks and spoons and the lot to match. I continue on through the sitting room and to the range in Mama’s kitchen. It felt odd following the same path as always when I arrived home this time from the Deverells, but I did it anyhow, perhaps to find some familiarity. I’d always dreamed of being an artist’s studio, and now to be there most days during the week and to be payed for it, it was exciting to be sure, but something about the change set me on edge. I knew there was no way to go back simply working at Mrs.

Tozer’s; I would want more from now on.

When I used to come home from the milliners I always made a habit of warming up in front of the range for a bit. I stand there, savouring the heat a moment and then pinch my teeth into the tips of my leather gloves and pull them off, making sure my mother doesn’t see. She did once, made me hold out my hands as she took the wooden spoon to them, scolding that, “Proper ladies do not bite off their gloves like wild animals.” Now every time I do so the words “wild animal” whisper through me, and it gives me a tremendous thrill. I don’t believe that’s what

Mama intended.

My teeth have just met the leather of my gloves, the salty taste of it on my tongue, when

Papa calls for me. His voice coming from his workshop in the back of the house is underlined by the harsh rasping of metal on stone. I hardly ever notice this noise, so common is it to the everyday music of chaos in our house, but today the sound makes me wince.

84 I drop my glove from my lips, and stride through the kitchen, past the washing room, and to his workshop in the back. Papa looks up at me for a quick moment. His neatly trimmed beard flecked with patches of crimson, this the only commonality shared between the two of us. That, and our long, thin necks. I am the only child in the family with red hair, and long ago he used to joke, as he bounced me on his knee, that it was he who was responsible for that curse. I am too old now for him to tease, to laugh with like he used to.

He sits atop his stool behind the the grindstone, working the pedals in a constant rhythm to keep an even speed on its spinning. He’s working on a carving knife, caressing it against the blur of the grindstone, jots of light bouncing from it. Even though he glanced up before, saw me, he doesn’t stop but leaves me standing awkwardly before him on purpose. He does this often, this waiting game.

He looks up from his work and acknowledges me with a bow of his head; I curtsy in response. He lifts his feet from the pedals and I watch the grindstone, still an out-of-focus blur, begin to slow. Mama said she would discuss the modeling with him and had told me later that he’d given his consent, but nothing else. I think of the bruise taking color on my inner thigh, feel sure that he is aware of it: damaged flesh of his daughter. Perhaps now he inspects my hair.

Looking to see if the back is flattened from lying on the ground, if it looks teased with caresses.

My own paranoid assumptions perhaps, but he often brags that he has an eye for detail. He likes to imagine that his work has given him a keen sense for detecting imperfections of any kind. The grindstone has made its slow progress to a stand still, where once again my eye can catch on its rough texture. This is when my father chooses to speak to me.

85 “Elizabeth. There’s never been much need for me to tell you about my work, it’s not for women so it doesn’t matter if you understand my craft or not. But there is one part of it which I feel is important to share with you. Integrity in the products I produce is of the utmost importance. Do you see this knife?” He holds up the carving blade he has been working on. A sharp edge is already forming along the bottom of the blade. I know this speech. Annie told me of it when she was being courted by the man who was to become her husband. He called her down and gave her this speech too. “When I make a blade, it must be crafted in such a way that it will never break, never rust, never deteriorate past the sharpening that must be done regularly by me. A blade rusts when one is cheap about materials; the water seeps into any weakness and begins to break it down. I pick a quality of steel which is dense, which repels the water, as it must do at all costs. No one desires a knife that has rusted. It’s a foul thing, tainted.” I nod. At first neither of us knew what to make of this speech. Anna brought it to me and Lyddy wondering what he could have meant by it. It was the word tainted, and the way Mama spoke sometimes about how men will corrupt a woman, that allowed us to make the connection. But I am flesh and not steel. I wonder if he is aware there is a difference?

He looks away and begins pedaling the grindstone back to full speed. I’ll retell this scene to Lyddy later and the two of us will have a good laugh over it. Papa’s attempt to encourage us to remain chaste more bewildering that convincing.

I drop him a curtsey he won’t see and return to the range, more out of the comfort of routine now, as my hands sweat within my gloves. My mother is there, preparing supper. She looks as though her full attention is fixed on the stew she’s stirring, but I know better than to fall into my one simple indulgence. I pull my gloves off like a lady, the beast within me hungry.

86 April 27, 1849

“You’ve shifted forward again,” Walter says with a sigh. His boots rap the hardwood floor as he approaches. He’s humming below his breath while he crouches beside me to check the composition, to see how far from it I’ve tilted. His humming vibrates down my throat, fills my body with its thrumming. Then he grabs my shoulders and tilts my bent frame upward again, just slightly. My lower back is seized with stiffness, my shoulders cramping and as he places his hands on them, I imagine his fingers stroking, soothing the pain away, but his touch is just a quick manipulation. I am a human frame for an image, and with a couple of adjustments he is done. He kneels down beside me, I at the very least have not dropped my gaze from the imaginary Orsino, the character with whom my Viola will be interacting with in the painting. He brings his face before my own, “Remember, every angle of your body is a line to hold. Even the most minute shifts and the pose will alter and distort.” His eyes are trying to meet mine, but I look past him, embarrassed. This is my second week of modeling for him and my body still shifts and drops without my awareness.

“I am very sorry. I just don’t feel myself moving.”

Walter’s lips draw out a patient smile, “You mustn’t be too discouraged, one can’t learn to be a model all at once. I’ve seen my friends try to train women who can barely hold still for ten minutes, who get frustrated with their demands and throw tantrums; you have done neither. You are improving, it just takes time.” He draws back to his canvas again, “Now, feel the lines and angles you are holding in this moment and stretch out into them.”

If only I could close my eyes, focus on the sensation of my posed body, but I continue my gaze on the black dot daubed on the wall. Walter’s brush slaps wetly against his palette as he

87 dabs it in the paint. On the second day I came in he let me see the painting I’m posing for. It’s obviously a work in progress, so much of it only sketch now and only pieces here and there filled in with colour. But his talent is obvious, even his rough sketches of the faces look more lifelike than my drawings with all their shading and hours of effort. If only I could turn my head a tiny bit to get him in view, to watch how he mixes the colours, how thickly he applies them to the canvas. All the things I could learn just by observing, but I’m kept frozen from watching.

My hands are clasped together earnestly, balanced on the side of the bench. My right elbow drops at a sharp angle away, hangs heavily toward the pull of the floor. This was the struggle of yesterday, the angle of my arm. Now it’s the line of my back. I imagine a rigid pole running down the spine, fixing this hunched, submissive posture, a face lifted upward towards the beloved, eyes fixed on the wall, eyes trying to imagine where Orsino would be to focus on.

To build a man out of mid-air.

He’s gotten me to dress the part today: long red robe with trailing sleeves, white tights and odd, pointed shoes. The first time I’ve been anywhere, save my bed, without the corset on.

Like some mollusk removed from the shell, I feel vulnerable. Rib cage expanding and contracting, testing its release. The rest of the body straining to hold this position. The shoulders cramping again, an ache building and building upon itself, creeping through every inch of muscle. And below the ache the shoulders still hold the residue of his hands on you. Five fingers fitting onto each shoulder to mould you, to shape your body into the woman hiding in the form of a simple errand boy.

You want him to meet your eyes again for a moment, gazing at him from the side, pulling all of your weight across this bench towards him and he, still remote. He, looking out past you to

88 another, he beside the canvas looking through your body and making it into another. You, a place-holder, a body to form a character onto. You are a character who has taken on another’s form. A disguise within a disguise.

Try to remember all the details from the painting Walter showed you. On the other side of

Orsino there’s a jester jabbering a comic reading from a book he holds loosely in his hands. The title, unreadable because of your frozen eyes, allowed only to look at this one man. In the distance, the quick, quavering notes from the flautist, a bare sketch only yesterday, and now a fully realized young boy, air in his lungs, pink lips puckered on the instrument, pushing out the music. Beyond that there is the barest rumble of voices, practically imperceptible. There is a promise of people in the background, only a suggestion of lines now but soon to be fully realized. On the back of your head the sun absorbs, warm on your skull, but making you sweat a bit beneath your hair pulled back. An itch nagging at you-

“Perfect,” Walter says. A world collapses around me with one blink of my eyes. When was the last time I dared to blink? My eyes are a raw protest when I close them and begin to water.

Walter’s eyes smile over the edge of the canvas, “A full fifteen minutes passed and gone and not a single shift in your lines. Beautiful! Lets take a little rest to celebrate shall we?” I lift myself from position, relaxing muscles that have seized into place, rolling one shoulder and then the other, reacquainting my skeleton with movement as though it might’ve forgotten how it feels.

Setting down his paints, Walter looks to Margaretta, engrossed in her needlepoint today.

I can’t help but admire her clean, efficient stitching, not one movement made that doesn’t need to be. Mrs. Tozer would be happy to have her as a new hire, but I doubt Margaretta’d be flattered if

89 I told her so. “Margaretta fetch us something from the kitchen won’t you? Perhaps a bit of that honey cake baked yesterday?”

Her eyes refuse to leave the work at first, and then at last she sighs, “If I go and get something for us you won’t make a pig of yourself again will you?”

“Excuse me?” Walter’s eyebrows draw up and stiffen, an attempt to appear imposing. A few days will go by when she does nothing, but every now and then she jabs a little. Her face neutral the entire time, but I know she does it for a laugh.

“I’m only asking because last time I barely had a crumb of the cake and it was gone.”

“Just go and get it will you?”

“Of course, little brother.” She sets her needlework down on the chair and glides out of the room.

“She really drives me mad sometimes. I’ll be happy to have a proper studio one of these days, when I can afford it. Then we won’t have to go around doing this silly chaperone business.

My mother has this assumption that this is the way it’s done, or for gentlemen painters at least.

She thinks only the coarser types don’t have chaperones, and I play along for her.”

And if Margaretta wasn’t here how might things change? He does speak differently to me after she’s left, I’ve noticed that. More intimately. And I thought maybe, the first time, that he might make some kind of advance. A subtle one even, brush against me briefly, let his hands stray when readjusting, fingers sliding down my ribcage. But there’s this space between us, almost as though he enforces it for himself. All these hopes of some kind of romantic intrigue and they’ve fallen entirely flat. Yet at the same time there’s an affection being built between us.

90 “Here, how about I show you something while she’s gone? May as well do something with this time, it takes her forever to cut cake properly. She’s so fussy about everything.”

He hasn’t even suggested teaching me anything till now. Knowing Margaretta she’ll come back in with the cake before I can learn anything. I follow him to his easel, notice the changes he’s made, how he’s added shadows to my robe, or the character’s rather.

“I haven’t started on them properly yet, but you see the crowd of people behind? Well any time you have a lot of people in the background you have to be awfully careful. They can become a distraction.”

“So how do you make sure they don’t?”

“Well that’s exactly what I want to tell you about. See this group here, these four men?

Well you’ll only see the backs of their heads. And all of the rest of the figures . . . Well it’s the faces, I make sure that they don’t really have faces.”

I lean close, try to picture how that will look, “But it’ll be odd won’t it?”

“You’d think so, but no. I mean I give them the suggestion of a face, but just a suggestion. Because think of how you look at the world. When you’re talking to someone and there’s a crowd of people behind, do you notice each of their faces?”

“Well no, it’s blurry. You can’t focus on all of them at once.”

“Exactly!” He reaches out and slaps me on the shoulder. I realize now he has touched me before, but when I think about it, it’s in the way you’ll see men touch when they’re talking on the street, clapping hands on each other, cuffing each other affectionately. I try to stop seeing the similarities, focus instead on what he’s just said, trying to encapsulate it into something simple to write down back at home.

91 August 26, 1852

The line of faces back in the gardens watch you on the beach. Before they had noses, mouths, eyebrows. But they’ve all been stretched out now, everything stretched featureless. It’s because you’re on the beach and they’re back there, invalids covered in their quilts drinking their tinctures.

But you took your medicine too. Two drops they said. Two drops. You were meticulous.

Should it feel like this? Your head so hazy. The two drops, you watched them, globes forming at the end of the dropper and then the ping into the tepid water. They came from the green glass bottle, the drops. You crushed the rubber ball at the end of the eye-dropper. You crushed it and drew up this odd concoction.

It must have gone off, or maybe something went wrong. Curl your head into your knees.

The spinning only worse the tighter you pull into yourself so you splay outward again. Don’t look at the oozing faces behind you, watch the sea instead.

Laudanum. That’s what they gave you to take. They’re trying to trick you. They want to poison you because you won’t sit in the lounge chairs back near the health spa like the rest of them. They looked evil, the drops as they hit the water. They were rust red. When they hit the water they became the tentacles of a squid, fine tendrils spreading their medicine out, writhing arms. Those tendrils moving through your blood now, to your brain. Maybe it’s only your brain they want to kill. They know you think about things a lady ought not think about. Mama and

Papa would’ve known when you came back from the Hermitage.

When you smelled the laudanum it stank of liquor and medicine, it was tangy and slightly spicy on your tongue, not to mention the slight burn of alcohol in the background. It doesn’t

92 taste the same as the way his skin tasted in your mouth. Sweat and salt. And salt in the air from the sea. You drank it too fast, that was the problem. You were staring out at the sea as you downed the glass as if it were a pint at the pub. The after-taste lingers, ringing your mouth like a burn. The sour-stinging taste humming on your lips, leaving your gums feeling sweetly tender.

It’s a celebration. You decided you would celebrate what happened when you got home.

You didn’t speak out loud, but you were celebrating inside. The dose is a celebration too because the glass and the little vial clinked together when you put them down on the sand. A toast to yourself because you went for what they want you to wait for. They want us to wait. Who is this they? Hard to say, no small crowd of pinch-faced elders ever comes forward to claim themselves as the they who holds you and everyone else back from passion. As if passion were an evil thing.

But everyone knows how they feel about it, how in the eyes of this always watching, always judging mass you’ve ruined yourself. They think it’s ruin, but you think maybe it’s making, forming, piecing yourself together. That’s what they don’t want, a whole you.

You can tell it’s a step toward being whole because the sketching changed after, it took on the loose passion he had been trying to encourage you into. It didn’t feel the same as when he guided your pencil, but was your own rhythm. The flow was different from his chaotic scribbles.

Your hand, finding a rhythmic movement almost as though it knew it before, but had lost it. You came back charged with that.

And is it the memory of that that makes your face feel flushed and tingly warm? Stroke your fingers across your face, knowing without seeing that your cheeks have that kind of peachy smear across them that other women so often try to bring out in you by pinching your cheeks.

93 Your mother and your sisters always worrying at your paleness, trying to pull the colour out. If only they knew that all it took was the sweet, sour of this drug.

You were anxious before the dose. The worry lost now, the warmth you’ve found instead.

Warmth spreading down your limbs in hot lines from the center of your stomach like a freshly stoked range. Don’t think of the worry, of the labels they will brand across your pale flesh, think instead of the other brands that he lay upon you, naked on the sheets. The brand of his teeth against your shoulder, the brand of his tongue on the back of your neck. The sounds, sounds that only animals make, breath no longer controlled but gasping and swallowed in gulps. This is what they don’t like about it, the way it brings out an animal in you, makes you notice things of your body you were dumb to before, the sharp scent and the way it changes, the way its movement expresses. The kind of knowing, the kind of growth of body that can’t be re-laced inside a corset any longer.

The nurses, Mrs. Spencer, what a gift in this bottle! You won’t be held back waiting on the sand, that is something only I was good at, waiting silently for my time. You are eyes realizing they can’t open wide enough for the horizon of the ocean, knowing that even if the haze were gone, the line of the far off distance is just an illusion anyway. That there will never be a line there to hold you back, a barrier you cannot break through. The drug makes everything wider and shows you for the first time what a horizon is.

94 May 1, 1849

In the beginning of our third week, other artists began arriving at Walter’s studio. Mostly just one at a time, but sometimes two together. Always without warning though, and so the first time I was lost in the trance of the pose for Viola, hunched over, hands clasped as always, when the first of them came through the door the shock was such that it threw me entirely out of the position. It took me a moment to gather myself, to stop gasping for air. Walter looked up from his canvas, sighed and came over to readjust me. Not a word of explanation, Walter seemed far more concerned about getting back to his work, but gave the man behind me a nod and a smile.

The man, in the meantime, screeched a stool across the floor, setting it next to the wall, to the side of me, but a bit behind. Paper rustled.

With my pose readjusted, he was just beyond the periphery of my vision. My eyes pulled to the right trying to get some sense of the stranger, till Walter cleared his throat meaningfully and my eyes found their way back to their mark. The man became only the sounds he made, his pencil scratching across the paper sometimes, other times a smoother sound as he dragged it across for longer lines, or shaded. The sounds fought with Walter’s painting at the front, and my eyes on neither of them, I began to fancy that they fought over me, brush against pencil, pulling at me from their different angles. What would this man see from his spot that Walter wouldn’t?

Maybe he’d show me the sketch at the end, allow me to see how the perspective changed things.

He could be seeing an entirely different woman, but only a few moments later, just as I relaxed into this dual translation of me, I heard a shuffling and a rustling, his footsteps behind me.

“Have a fine afternoon Mr. Millais,” Margaretta murmured.

95 “And to you Miss Deverell,” the man said and then there was a groan of the door opening and closing.

After that our visitors seemed regular, but for the most part silent, and always varying in how long they would stay, some for the whole day, others just for an hour or so. Sometimes

Walter would remember to introduce them to me. There was a Mr. Collinson who had the complexion of a dead man and the eyes of a fish. At one point there was also a Mr. Hunt, who couldn’t be bothered to even acknowledge me. He wore a startling emerald waistcoat and his jacket was fraying about the sleeves. Just about everything seemed a bit rough about him, including his beard which very much needed a trim. In fact, the more of them that came, either introduced, or remaining nameless, the more I noticed that Walter was not quite one of them. He was polished in a way that they could never be. They were always slightly bedraggled, wearing poorly tailored clothing in brilliant colours. Walter never seemed at ease with them either; there was something forced and slightly desperate about the way he’d smile at them, make a bit of chit chat and then directed them to a stool or a chair behind me.

They would take up their perch and as much as I thought perhaps this might simply be a part of the modeling life and that I must get used to it, I felt on edge the entire time. Just out of sight they would sit there, mapping me out. The scratch of the pencil carving my shape out from the paper. When I was deep enough in the pose the sound of their pencils translated into the movement their fingers might make, my body became the paper, the point of lead dragging down my spine, sliding down my thighs, pulling up from my navel. Below the sound of the pencil, their breathing audible at times. But then they would be gone again, just as I fell into the

96 rhythms of their sketching they would leave. The sketch of me going with them; a piece of myself I’d never get to see. Finally, bold enough, I asked Walter.

“They’re from the Brotherhood,” he told me. “You needn’t be so anxious about it. I’ll see to it that you get a little bit extra for this.”

“It’s only just that,” how to say this without looking foolish, “I wish I could see the sketches they leave with.”

He smiled in response, “They’re only rough drawings. Nothing you can learn from really. Just practice for them, and also a way of them making a study of you. It means they’ll be keeping you in mind for their own work. You ought to be thanking me really.”

“Of course. I’m very appreciative.” He couldn’t understand, how could he? The feeling reminded me of a story a street girl, a flower seller, had told Lyddy and I. She said she knew all about voodoo and that if someone cut a lock of your hair without you knowing it they could practice dark magic on you. The drawings these men did were samples they took of me. They may as well have cut off a chunk of my hair or asked for my nail clippings. They took these personal images of me home and I had no idea what they’d do with them there.

Every time a new man would come, I’d listen for the way he’d draw me. There were those who were light on the pencil and passive, fading away from my attention, while others seemed to attack the paper so forcefully I gritted my teeth the entire time. As a distraction to the unease, there was a game I played with each one, trying to guess what manner he would dissect me by the way he entered the room.

When the door opens this time, I prepare myself to listen for the way his feet meet the floor, the force with which he will close the door. The hints of what kind of man he is.

97 “Walter!” The voice is half-laughing, as if Walter’s name is the punch-line to a joke.

Walter sets down his pencil, gives a little nod to me and I drop the pose. He’s a hard mixture to read as strides across the room. His lips smile, but it’s the kind of smile you stretch across your face for unexpected company. A polite smile, but not a genuine one. “Dante,” he says. Dante Gabriel Rossetti, he’s spoken of him before, with admiration, but then of course he speaks of all of them that way.

Free from my pose I turn to study this new arrival, to see if he will be just as bohemian as the rest, and he doesn’t fail to measure up to the others. His long hair, so dark it’s nearly black, is matted in patches, as though he’s forgotten to brush it for days. Wide, brown eyes with heavy lashes, and lips a bit too full for a man. He’d almost be effeminate really if it weren’t for his angular face, none of the soft curves of a woman’s, and the adam’s apple jutting from his throat undercuts the effect as well. I try to work out if as a whole the man is attractive, or a bit odd around the edges, or perhaps a bit of both.

Walter stands across from him, waiting for his next words, but Dante’s eyes have left those of his friend and drift over to me. Those round, round eyes fall upon me, the black pupils darting to and fro as if he’s making a sketch of me with them. I can’t help but wonder if this is how they all look at me when I’m being sketched. But something tells me that even if the others were standing beside him, doing the same, his gaze would still irritate me more than theirs. He’s more striking than the others, but he’ll only repeat their pattern. I’ll never know what it is he draws and takes away with him. And for him to stand there, no paper even in hand, staring like that. Rude. I want to tell him so, pull his eyes away from their study, but the words won’t come, so I clear my throat instead. And then again a little louder. He startles as if he’s forgotten I am a

98 thing of flesh and blood, brings his study away from my body and to my face for the first time, and it’s him that flushes. Good. He must see the outrage gathering there.

But just as quickly, he’s turning back to Walter, “Well Walter, aren’t you going to introduce us? I think the awkward silence has gone on long enough don’t you?” And now he’s turned it upon Walter, as if it’s his fault.

“I think we’re capable of introducing ourselves without Mr. Deverell having to do so.”

My voice doesn’t come out as cold as I’d like it to. I’m standing now, moving towards him, then

I drop a curtsey. “Miss Siddall,” I say.

He gives a bow, “I’m Dante.”

“Mr. Rossetti. Mr. Deverell has told me a lot about you.”

He grins at Walter, “I see what you mean. Quite a proper sort isn’t she? A real lady.”

“And what else would I be?” I pull my arms close to me, stiffen as if preparing for a skirmish, willing myself not to lose my temper. No difficulty making my voice cold this time.

Dante’s grin falters, “I apologize. We’ve only just met and it wasn’t proper of me to tease that way. We just find that the women who usually pose for us are — well they’re the spirited type, not so stringent about social decorum.”

“I see. Well that’s not how I was raised.”

“Understandable. But you might try and loosen up a little. You may even find you enjoy it.” He winks at me. I’m quivering slightly, why do I shake like this? From his impertinence, yes. He’s being highly inappropriate and suggestive, winking like that.

99 He reaches over to my shoulder, gives a little squeeze, his fingers pressing through the thin fabric of the sleeves, his hands sweaty and the damp of them transfers through the fabric.

“Shall I sketch you then?”

“Under one condition.” The words drive out of my mouth with an unexpected force; we are both surprised by them. He shifts his weight from foot to foot, crosses his arms, waiting to hear the conditions. “When you’ve done sketching me, I’d like to see it. The sketch that is.

None of the others have shown me what they’ve done, they hardly even speak to me. I want to learn. And Walter, Walter is teaching me, but I just thought that perhaps — ” I’m running out of air, have barely paused between the words to catch my breath. Walter looks a bit shocked. Much too forward of me, the entire thing. And this man, Walter has told me that he’s unofficially the leader of all of them. If he’s put off then the others won’t come any more. None of them. I’ll be finished before I’ve even begun. No one else will offer me a job and I may as well just -

“Ha!” Dante exclaims, the sound, half air, half voice, pushing out of him in disbelief; I startle at the noise. “Walter, is Miss Siddall telling me that she wants to learn and you haven’t encouraged the boys to help her learn a few things?”

“I didn’t want to trouble them.” Walter replies.

“You worry too much about things like that,” Dante says, then turns back to me, “I’ll sketch you first, then we’ll discuss it.”

“How would you like me to pose? I’m not very experienced yet of course, but if you give me some direction.” He’ll want to see what I’ve learned from Walter; he’s looking to be convinced before he helps me.

“Oh, I don’t want a ‘pose’ per se,” Dante says. “Do as you like.”

100 “Sorry?” I say.

“Just do whatever you wish and I’ll draw you as you are.”

Walter goes back to his stool by his canvas, sits down to become our audience. Even

Margaretta is watching now. The other men seem far more preferable now, they may have been silent, but that meant they didn’t intrude, didn’t force me into some odd exercise that surely must be for Dante’s own entertainment.

I search the room looking for some inspiration, anything at all. The book. There’s a book on Margaretta’s lap. If he’s going to ask something so odd of me I may as well give myself something to do. A distraction to take away the nerves.

“Margaretta,” I say approaching her end of the room, “Your book, would you mind if I borrow it for a moment?”

She nods and passes it over to me. I study the cover, Eliza Haywood? Really? I would’ve imagined Margaretta to be more of a Fielding type of girl than reading antiques like

Haywood.

“Come on then,” Dante says from a chair he’s pulled up for himself. I exchange the chair

I was sitting on for a high stool with a torn cushion on the top. I perch atop it with the book, stretch my left leg out in front of me to rest the heel on the floor, and tuck the right leg under me, the ball of my foot balancing on the bottom rung of the stool. I open the book randomly to a page, prop it up against my lap.

“Well?” I ask Dante, I see he’s opened his sketchbook, pencil poised above the paper.

“Lovely,” he says. “You’ve given me plenty of good lines to draw.”

101 I look back to the book, a pleased smile on my face. If this was some test then clearly

I’ve passed. I study the text on the page till it loses all the meaning, the words becoming meaningless black scribbles. All the while, the sounds of him sketching me. There is a difference between him and the others, while the others were silent he hums softly to himself. A low hum, almost without tune at times, or cutting out at certain sections. There is a kind of grace to the way he draws, or from what I can hear of it. It sounds like long, swooping lines to me, the pencil racing across the page. The humming and the sketching loosen the cramping muscles in my arms, make my shoulders droop, my eyes still staring down at the book, but registering nothing of what they see.

It’s hardly any time at all it seems and then he’s calling me over to him. “You wanted to see the sketch I’ve done of you, yes?”

I return the book to Margaretta and come to him. Hesitant about it because this is the only drawing I’ve seen of myself outside of what Walter’s working on. It’s very different indeed.

In Walter’s work I’m simply one figure in a grouping, and a fairly unimportant one at that, but on

Dante’s sheet there is only me. Or the me that he sees at any rate. I can’t help thinking that he’s shortened my neck a bit, but the lips, he’s gotten that right, and my stare down into the book.

“How do you do that,” I ask him.

“Do what?”

“The eyes, the look in her eyes.”

“Your eyes you mean.”

“Well yes, I know, but she’s separate from me, she isn’t really me. But how? You were drawing for such a short time.”

102 “Eyes give you difficulty do they?”

“I can never quite seem to get them right. They’re always a bit dull, or there’s something a bit off about them.”

“And what do you do when you’re fixing them?”

“Well I can’t. I’ve given it a go a few times, but now I no longer bother. When it’s wrong I’ve nothing to erase it with.”

“Ah,” he says, “Tools, the right tools are very important. There isn’t some magic secret I can tell you about drawing eyes, it’s the practice. But if you can’t erase, it’s impossible to do that isn’t it? Here, I might have something for you.” He has a satchel that he must have taken the sketch book out of. He rummages about in it, then pulls out a black lump.

“Here,” he says holding it out to me. “I think this ought to help.”

I lean forward studying it, it looks like a gummy black blob. A nasty looking thing really.

“Well aren’t you going to take it?” he asks.

“What on earth is it?”

“Well an eraser of course. I’ll let you keep it. You can draw eyes to your heart’s content and erase every time you make a mistake and start over again.”

I reach out hesitantly, don’t really want to touch it, but it is precisely what I need. It’s warm from his hand, and soft, not greasy as I’d imagined. I take it from him, study it again.

How could something black erase pencil? I’ll have to give it a try tonight.

* * *

Lyddy is brushing Clara’s hair when I come to our room, hoping to show her my prize.

Lyddy has a hank of Clara’s dirty blond hair in her hand, her fingers firmly locked around it as

103 Clara squirms and whimpers at the harsh tugs to her scalp. Lyddy’s head turns toward me, but then twists back again. Not so much as a grunt in greeting to me. She’s pretending that brushing

Clara’s hair is taking up all her attention.

“One of them gave me a gift today. He actually spoke to me, let me look at his sketch this time,” I tell her. I hold out the black glob of eraser, “Look, it’s exactly what I’ve needed.”

She grimaces, “Ugh. What is that thing?”

“I thought it was nasty looking too, but it’s an eraser you see. I can finally fix mistakes when I make them. Start over again if I happen to get something wrong.”

“So he just gave this to you then,” she gives a harder tug at Clara’s hair, making her squeak a little.

“Well yes.”

“He’ll expect something for it no doubt,” she says.

“You don’t know the man, and you don’t know that.”

“They all expect something. That is if you’re pretty, if you’re not, well.” She gives several furious strokes to Clara’s hair in quick succession.

“Don’t mind her!” Clara tells me, her eyes tearing up with the sting, “She got ignored by some silly man that was supposed to propose to her or something.”

“Clara!” Lyddy hisses.

“I heard you telling Mama about it. Maybe he didn’t know. You were only there to fit his sister for a dress after all.”

Lyddy gives her a sharp rap on the head with the brush, “That’s for being smart. Mama can finish brushing your hair then. I won’t listen to any more of this.”

104 Clara bounces off the bed cupping her smarting head with a palm, “But Mama pulls even harder than you!”

“Good,” says Lydia plucking some of Clara’s stray hairs off her skirt as Clara stomps out of the room.

“I’m so sorry Liddy,” I say. “Mr. Cornforth right? There will be others, there always is.”

“Yes, well I don’t have men coming to and fro to sketch me every other day do I?”

“Perhaps he just needs more time?”

She’s fixated on the brush now, pulling out strands of Clara’s hair from it, cleaning it.

“It’s not time,” she says, “It has nothing to do with time.” She gets up off the bed and leaves with a little cloud of hair in her hand, heading for range where she’ll toss it in with the coals, watch it smolder away.

105 May 2, 1849

When I arrive at Walter’s studio early the next morning there are two men there already.

One I recognize as Mr. Hunt, the other is unfamiliar.

“We wanted to apologize for not introducing ourselves earlier,” says the man I don’t recognize. He’s a great deal shorter than Mr. Hunt, with masses of curls and a high voice, nearly like some prepubescent boy. He looks to be a bit younger than Hunt as well. But what he lacks in height and age he more than makes up for in the self-assured, somewhat cocky way he carries himself, “I’m Johnny Millais,” he says giving me a little bow, and then gestures to Mr. Hunt,

“And this William, but we like to call him Mad on occasion for reasons I’m sure you’ll discover soon enough.” The last time I saw Mr. Hunt he was across the room from me and I didn’t get to study him for long. He does have certain handsomeness about him, his mahogany hair swept back from his brow, but his eyes carry a look of permanent disinterest, as though he is waiting for the world to surprise him and is constantly disappointed by the result.

“We were hoping,” continued Mr. Millais, “that you might care to join us after you’ve done for the day. We’ll be going out for an early dinner and we’d like to treat you to a meal if we could.”

“That would be very generous of you Mr. Millais, I would be delighted.” I agree before

I can even begin to think of how I’ll manage this. There’ve been a few nights when I’ve come home later, it’s true, but with everyone in the family having to rise early there’ll only be so many times that the disturbance will be tolerated.

“You must have made quite the impression on Gabriel yesterday,” Mr. Hunt says.

106 “Gabriel? I don’t believe I’ve met him,” I reply, feeling foolish under his sardonic gaze as though I should know this name, but it’s entirely unfamiliar.

“Well I should think you had, he certainly let us have it for not making you feel welcome before,” says Mr. Hunt.

“He means Dante Rossetti,” Mr. Millais tells me. “His true first name is Gabriel, but he’s gone and switched his first and middle names around, thinks it makes him more of a romantic figure I suppose.”

“I do apologize if he’s said anything harsh on my behalf Mr. Hunt,” I mumble, looking over at Mr. Millais even though he’s not the one I’m addressing.

“You’ve nothing to apologize for,” Mr. Millais says, his prim mouth upturning slightly.

“Dante can become a bit impassioned about things at times.”

“Well it’s odd. We don’t generally have to go around being so cordial to models. You come in, you pose as we tell you to.” Mr. Hunt leans forward towards me as if expecting me justify Mr. Rossetti protective inclinations. I feel like a small child being scolded by my father again, holding my tender wrists out for the sharp bite of a switch.

“But she wants to learn,” says Mr. Millais.

“Well I’ll believe that when I see some of her work.”

“I’d be happy to bring along some of my sketches sometime Mr. Hunt,” I say, willing myself to keep my hands from trembling. The dinner invitation feels as though it’s slipping from my grasp.

“The Academy doesn’t let women in, but we do, William,” Mr. Millais says, his voice tightening into shrillness. “I would be happy to have a look at your work.”

107 “Well if you’re going to come out with us this evening you’ll have to drop this Mr. Hunt and Mr. Millais business. We’re artists for God’s sake. I’m William, he’s Johnny, and who are you?”

“Miss . . . ” I falter, “Elizabeth. My name is Elizabeth.” I say.

“Good,” William replies. “You can forget the way the world out there acts. Their rules don’t apply to us and if you want to learn you’ll keep that in mind. You won’t be finding any dainty snacks and tea services around here.”

“Are you two quite done yet?” I hear Walter’s voice from the other end of the studio.

He’s been quietly preparing his materials for the duration of our conversation, but now stands with his arms crossed, leaning against the wall. “I’d like my model back if you wouldn’t mind.

Last I remember, I was the one who found her in the first place.”

William lets out a laugh that sounds more like hiccuping, an awkward sort of noise. He’s becoming less and less attractive by the minute. “Terribly sorry Walter,” he says. “She’s all yours. We’ll just sit and sketch over in the corner near your dear sister. She’s so wrapped up in that book of hers she’ll hardly notice us.”

Walter sets me in the pose, and I try to settle into it. It was almost easier without the interaction. When they were just faces with no names and voices attached. And then I think of

Dante talking to them on my behalf, telling them to introduce themselves to me, the trouble he’s gone to in order to make me feel included. Perhaps William is right to have these doubts, to put me in my place. Only here for a few weeks and I expect a big welcoming in from all of them.

Me. A woman. But it was Walter looking at the sketches that made him want to teach me. So maybe if I can bring them next time -

108 “Lizzie, your chin, you’ve let it drop again,” Walter calls from across the room.

“We won’t ask you out to dinner again if it means you can’t model for our Walter,”

William says, giving me a wink. He’s only teasing now, but I’m tired of his barbs.

“Oh, those eyes!” William says all of a sudden. “Johnny did you see?”

“How could I have, I’m on the other side of the room.” I drop the pose entirely now, there was a cramp building in my shoulder, and if they’re going to talk I may as well take a break. I look to Walter for approval he sighs, and nods.

“You could have gutted a fish with that razor keen look she just gave me,” William continues, talking about me as if I weren’t there in flesh and blood before him.

“Only you can bring that out in women Will,” Johnny says.

“Can you do it again?” William asks me. “I’d like to draw it if I could.”

“Me looking at you?”

“Yes!”

“Alright then.” I stare flatly at him.

“Oh come on. That’s not even trying.”

“I don’t know what I was doing that you were so captured by, so how can I possibly duplicate it?”

“You were angry with me. That’s what I’m after.” His eyes have lost that drowsy look and he leans forward on his stool towards me. I can’t help but see how far to push things.

“I can’t just call up emotions on cue for you,” I reply.

“You are a model, Elizabeth, you’ll have to. And if you find yourself unable to do that perhaps you should return to your full hours at that other job of yours where you sew on buttons,

109 or feathers or whatever it is you do.” He begins sketching furiously now, pencil skittering across the paper. Insolent man! Making my work seem petty, as if he could have near the amount of skill it takes to do that. His fingers are far too thick anyways, thick and clumsy with something as detailed as stitching.

“Good” he says, pulling his pencil up from his paper, smiling at me. “One wouldn’t think those grey eyes of yours could have such ferocity. You have the kind of passion it takes to be an artist, but it still doesn’t prove that you have any skill.”

A trick. How clever. He tricked me to get what he wanted.

“Do you want to see?” he asks. There’s no need for him to ask. Of course I’ll come and see it. He knows that, but he enjoys the game of it anyways. I rise and saunter over as if only to appease him. The lines, although quickly laid down on the paper, and a lot sketchier than

Dante’s, seem more mature, they’re darker for instance, whereas Dante seems uncertain about putting too much weight on his pencil. And the expression on my face! I’ve never seen myself angry before. My lips reduced to a thin line, my cheeks hollow, the eyes like the dogs my brothers would tease and torment till the strays turned on them, snarling and snapping.

“Do you like the eyes?” William asks. “Dante said you were having trouble with them.”

Dante told him? I share a weakness with him and he tells William. The two of them most likely having a laugh over it. Eyes are probably simple for them. William sitting there smugly, waiting for some response. I won’t answer, I won’t answer him now or I’ll lose my temper. Need to calm down. I dart past William for the door, cool air on my face, my boots taking me back and forth over the flagstone pathway. Deep breaths in and out, my fingers picking at a loose thread on my sleeve.

110 “Lizzie?” Walter’s voice behind me, but I don’t stop pacing. “I’m sorry. He can be a bit cruel at times.” His hand on my shoulder makes me stop at last, the affectionate squeeze of his fingers. “This is why I thought it wouldn’t hurt that they weren’t speaking to you just yet.

You’ll have to get use to this though you know, if you want to work with the others.”

“I know,” I say. “I just don’t appreciate Dante sharing something like that with him.”

“They share everything with each other. William was his mentor after all.”

“I see.”

“Look, tantrums aren’t all that uncommon around here at any rate. You go back inside now and everyone will pretend it didn’t happen. That’s the way we deal with it.”

And so I do as he says. Allow him to mould me back into the pose for Viola, my back hunched over, my left arm resting on a frame he’s had built for me to help hold the position. I push the thoughts of the others away. Find my way back into the character.

* * *

Dusk has settled by the time we’ve arrived at the pub they’ve promised to take me to.

Shadows from the buildings across the street are black gouges in the stone. Fingers of pipe smoke curl round the door as Johnny heaves it open, pressing his shoulder against its bulk to hold it for us.

Inside it’s much darker than I expected, only two gas lamps in the place. It takes a moment for my eyes to adjust. There’s a din of voices and laughter but the bodies they erupt from are still veiled by the shadows and the smoke.

Johnny leads me to a corner table, William trailing behind us. As we push through tight knots of people clustered at each table, faces begin to emerge. The faces are lit from below,

111 giving men the masks of old age. Youth becoming haggard as shadows catch on the faintest of lines and deepen them. The light comes from disfigured tallow candles, waxy messes that must get scraped off the tables at the end of the night and re-melted and cobbled back together. They look like the cripples I see sometimes hobbling about on the rougher streets, ends of their limbs lumpy knobs, fingers missing.

William pulls out a chair for me. I eye the chair across the table, far away from him, the one I hoped to sit at, but it’s too late for that now. The silence from the carriage ride to the pub carries over to the table for awhile.

Johnny leans across the table to William, “Did you hear about the trouble Annie gave that fellow who comes in Thursdays? You know, that stocky blacksmith that’s always bragging about his way with the ladies? Well he managed to get Annie to come with him, probably the only one of the girls he’s ever managed to get, and his wife comes back from work early. My god is she livid! The other fellows say she chased him half a mile screaming blood murder at him.”

Johnny waited for William to laugh at the story, but William was picking at a worn spot on the wood table with a sour look on his face.

“Well you can’t be surprised about it can you?” Johnny says. “Annie’s never one to be fussy about the company she keeps. Doesn’t surprise anyone that she’d get in the middle of a mess like that.”

“Don’t speak of her that way!”

“What’s gotten into you then? All testy.”

“I mean to make a model of her and I won’t have her disrespected in such a way.”

112 “Annie? She’s a stunner alright, but I’d hardly worry about being disrespectful to a whore

Mad, you’re being awfully moody this evening,” Johnny laughs, slapping William on the shoulder good heartedly hoping to nudge him out of sulking.

“Ford has his Emma, no one speaks disrespectfully of her,” William says.

“Emma! Why Emma’s an honest girl, she’s the daughter of a tradesman, just like our

Lizzie here, but that doesn’t put either of them on the level of a whore just because they’re below us.”

I grew tired of their conversation, not knowing of these other women of which they spoke. I look around at the tables that surround us, study the figures at each one. Nearly all men.

A couple at the table nearest are eyeing me; one hooks his finger at me, beckoning. Even in the dim light the grime caught in the creases of his fingers is visible. I imagine that finger tracing across my cheek, leaving a smudge behind. I look away quickly, but still catch a last glimpse of him staring, his tongue flicks over his upper lip.

The few women are scattered about. One at a nearby table is sitting on a man’s lap, scowling down at him as he kneads at her waist pleadingly.

“Where was you last week then? After getting your pay?” she says.

He mumbles something inaudible in response.

“Jenny!” she screams. “You wasted your pennies on that little bitch! You won’t be having any of this then.” She stands abruptly, gives him a sharp slap across the cheek, my body jolting from the shock just as much as his does from the impact. I look over at Johnny and

William, but they don’t seem to have noticed. The woman swooshes past me, too much rouge on

113 her cheek and the dress in a sad state. The fabric looks like it had a pattern to it once, but now it’s a muddied gray. It could’ve been violet when it started out.

The other women are circulating among the men. Sometimes sitting among them for a moment, other leaning invitingly over the tables, breasts nearly escaping the tops of their dresses.

I nudge John, “Should I be here?”

“Nothing to worry over,” he replies. “Just don’t make eye contact with them and they’ll think you’re with us.”

“But I’m not — ” I begin, outraged.

“I know, of course not, but it’s better if you look as though you are.”

“Well you can think again, if you fancy some idea that I’ll be sitting on your lap.”

“William, I think we ought to buy her a beer. What do you say Lizzie? Help calm you down a little.”

I nod. Not sure how it’ll sit in my uneasy stomach. When the glass comes I grip my fingers tight around it, then notice the grit I feel on the surface and the dried bits of beige gunk fused to it. I’m glad now for the dim light. There’s no telling what’s floating about in that glass.

My stomach folding in and in on itself, I make a decision, lift the glass up, open my mouth and begin gulping it back in great big draughts.

I pause for a moment, halfway through, both Johnny and William have ceased talking now, are watching, shocked. I lift the glass again, pretend the first half isn’t already hanging heavy in my stomach and I drain the rest.

“Good lord,” breathes Johnny.

114 “The glass was dirty,” I explain. “Didn’t have the stomach for what might have been floating around in there.”

“Used to the finer things are we?” William says, then raises his glass to Johnny. “To all the glasses being dirty.” He clinks his glass, laughing.

Johnny hands my empty vessel over to a passing barmaid, grinning nervously. She takes it up without so much as looking at him.

“I think you ought to let that settle for a bit,” Johnny says to me.

“No doubt,” William agrees. “If we get you sick there’ll be no end to the whining I hear from Walter over it.”

There’s a sharp pain in my side, stomach bloated from the beer. I raise my hand discreetly to my lips to cover a small belch.

They don’t want me to look back to the crowd but I can’t help it. The women, teasing out their hair with their hands, fingernails chasing out itches in their scalps, curling greasy ringlets around their pinkies.

Red, red lips and lines of kohl around the eyes. Sweat staining their armpits, dripping down their cleavages as they dodge and weave between the tables, ruffling a man’s hair here, squeezing a shoulder there, or for the more familiar ones they move in close, cup their hands under their chins, tilt them up to meet their black, smudged eyes. The way they hold the men’s gaze with their false look of wanting, teasing out memories of pleasure from last week. Pulling the money from them with those memories.

And the men with no money, still after something, reaching out, pretending it’s an accident when their hands round the rump of one of the women, when their knuckles scraping

115 along their thighs. They tug at the ladies’ skirts, let their hands trace along a curve of her before the slap comes. Some of them even seem to like the slap.

My dress hangs clammy against my skin, the conversations even more of a roar of noise.

The glow from the candles a yellow haze, a tongue licking over all of me in the damp heat of a room filled with too many bodies.

John and William’s conversation has faded away in the ruckus. They are only their moving mouths now. The people a constant rolling mob, like the rapids of a river where the tables have become rocks that part the water, spilling around the tables, the only fixed places in the room.

And now, a man beside you, long black beard with a thin-lipped mouth, his eyes thin slits.

His hand working up the skirt of an oblivious woman before him. A woman weaving to and fro from drink. He notices you looking, lips slightly parted, as his hand slides further and further up her skirt. You should say something, open your mouth for a warning, but your lips numb, the room an unrelenting torrent of noise. Body limp, you do nothing.

Imagine his fingers making that same journey, crawling slowly up your leg, just barely touching you. The feel of ragged skin and chewed nails brushing against your thigh. The sweat on your forehead gone cold.

The woman squeals with outrage; he’s found his mark. She turns back, ripping his hand from beneath her skirts and strikes out. Not a slap this time, but a hard blow to his jaw, a resounding crack as bone meets bone with a thin sliver of skin between each. He grabs her hair in rage, yanking it down, her body straining, she screaming trying to twist back towards him to claw at him, break free.

116 And two men have rushed from behind the counter to aid her, upsetting chairs and knocking against people as they go. Fists rising in the air behind them, connecting with jaws and cheekbones, missed blows for the men who have jostled them. The slap of knuckles against skin, the grunts of men scuffling and cursing.

The two men have found their troublemaker, one begins pummeling him in the face, while the other pries his fingers from the woman’s hair. Some of it has already been tugged free and the man’s fingers are smeared with blood from her scalp.

All those at tables that ring around the commotion join in the screaming, throwing bottles into the center. Roaring and jeering. A hand grabs you by your upper arm, pulling you up.

You’re about to start thrashing and screaming too, want to sink your teeth into whoever’s holding you, your eyes unable to cope with the floating feeling of the room, your feet uncertain in their balance. Turn your head back to see who has you first. Dante.

“Come on Lizzie,” he says and how he’s pulling you, along with the others to a table as far as possible from the fight. The screeching and sounds of fists smacking against skin still audible, but now a more distant threat.

“Did anyone see how that began?” Dante asks. “I just came through the door and fists were flying every which-way.”

“There was a man,” you say.

“Clearly,” William snorts.

“He was looking at me,” you continue. “He slid his hand up a woman’s skirt. Touched her.”

“Is she a bit drunk?” says Dante.

117 “I wouldn’t be surprised,” says Johnny. “She drank an entire pint of beer in one go and she is a wispy thing. Can’t be much there to absorb it.”

“Well why on earth would she do that?”

“Said the glass was dirty. Couldn’t stomach drinking it slowly.”

“We ought to get her something to eat, that’ll help.” Dante turns to you, “Lizzie, how about a bit of pork and potatoes?”

You nod, still watching where the fight was. His hand up her skirt. It’s ended now. All three men splattered with blood and bruises, the man who started it barely conscious now. A group of them pick him up, whites of his eyes showing, toss him out the door and onto the street.

The woman is back flirting with another man as though nothing happened. Holding a bloody rag to her head from time to time. Remember her face, teeth gritted, mixture of anger and fear. Was it the first time? His fingers on her thighs. The first time a man had cornered her that way?

The men attack their food with vigor when it comes. Knives ripping through the meat.

The greasy piece of flesh on your plate not unlike the man’s face, piece of meat with rivulets blood oozing from it.

Start with the potatoes then. Cooked for far too long, a lumpy mess and the blood from the meat has soaked into them, made half of them a light pink. Every bite a mouthful of blood.

You slice the meat, a clean diagonal incision with the knife, bring it to your lips. The hard outer crust of it difficult to chew through at first, and then you get down to the raw blood flesh in the center. The grease coating your lips, you wipe it off with the back of your hand, smearing it across your cheek. No one notices. Your stomach sour on the meal already, but you keep eating, pushing down mouthful after mouthful.

118 Dante addresses you in a low voice, “And how was it today? Better?”

“I’m here aren’t I? Where women like me aren’t supposed to be.”

“No, I mean did you learn anything from either of them.”

“William doesn’t seem fond of me at all.”

“Is that a no then?”

“He says he’ll only instruct me when he sees that I have some actual talent.”

“That seems a fair point.” His face so near your own as he says these things that you can see a fresh crop of stubble on his cheeks and chin. You would’ve thought he was one of those men unable to grow facial hair, with those long lashes and cupid’s bow lips. Not really a proper man, more of a seraphim. Curious, those blunt edges of hair, wonder what they’d feel like against your cheek. The smell of him just as out of place as the facial hair. A luxuriant smell, a musk with an undertone of cloves and other spices.

“He’s upset with you,” you tell him, trying to pull the slur from your voice.

“William’s often upset with me.”

“No, he says you’re being absurd supporting me when you haven’t even seen my work.”

“Well I plan on seeing it.”

“And others, others say that you’re only doing this because you want something from me.”

“What others?”

“My sister.”

“Well don’t tell her about it then and you won’t have to worry about her opinion. Only your own. Don’t tell her about tonight either.” He reaches out, puts his hand over yours lightly.

119 You should draw away, not proper for him to be doing this, but the hand is softer than you were expecting. A comforting warmth. “You’re going to find if you become a part of this world that the people from your old life, your sister, your family, they won’t understand. They’ll shame you for the things you do and it will be hard, but you’ll be freer than them. So you’ll learn to twist the truth. You’ll find ways if you want to be able to slip back and forth between the two.”

“Is she right though?” You lean closer, bring your voice down to what feels like a whisper. “Do you want something from me?” The answer, what do you want the answer to be?

If he says yes what would you be agreeing too? The man sliding his hand up her dress.

“These other women here, that’s the manner in which they talk. Don’t speak like them.

You are not one of them.” He stabs his last piece of pork on the tines of his fork and then slips it daintily into his mouth. Turns away from me to talk to the others. The beer absorbed now, the swimming feeling leaving my eyes and I feel a fool. I’ve been too forward with him. I’ve been too forward with all of them. But then isn’t that what they’ve asked for? For me to drop the Mr. and Miss, to call them by their first names? Perhaps they make this up as they go along, these rules. Have they ever brought any other woman here besides me? Maybe not. Maybe we are muddling through this together.

120 February 2, 1854

He had to restrain you after he told you. It was his voice. The tone was too flippant, too casual about the news. Your fist, your fist cleaving through the air for his cheek. He caught your wrists before you connected with the side of his face, then he grabbed both arms, pinioned them to your sides, your body twisting against his, elbows trying to drive into his ribs. Screaming and crying at the same time.

You moaned, “You’re happy. You’re happy about it!” You’d exhausted yourself by then, slumping into his shoulder.

“Oh for God’s sake Lizzie. We all knew this was coming. He was sick long before he met you.” He tilted his head against yours, an awkward gesture meant to comfort.

“No one told me till a week ago. No one thought I needed to know.” Your face a wet mess, hair sticking on your cheeks with the tears.

“It wasn’t important. There was nothing to be done.”

“All those times he drank too much at the pub. That couldn’t have helped. He only ever did it to impress you lot.”

“We always accepted him, Gug.”

“Only after he found me. He told me that, how none of you could ever spare much time till I came along.”

“That’s ridiculous.”

“Then you wanted me all for yourself. You wouldn’t let me go back to model for him.”

“He didn’t have the talent to utilize you properly.”

121 “He was my friend. I barely even saw him anymore. You always had some reason why I couldn’t go visit him.”

He pulled his head away, air whistling through his nose as he sighed, “He wouldn’t have ever married you.”

You yanked away, his eyes were directed at the far wall.

“I know that’s what you’d hoped. But his family would have never allowed it. I only kept you away from him for your own good. So you wouldn’t make a fool of yourself.”

Your hand didn’t sting after you slapped him. You were surprised by this. You would’ve thought with the force it would have hurt. He clutched his hand to his cheek, darted forward as if to club you and then twisted back again and strode out the door.

The bed. You’d made for the bed and drawn the sheets over you, the stifling warm darkness some pathetic attempt to crawl back into the womb. You drew your knees to your chest, tucked your head.

The ache wouldn’t let you do anything. Wouldn’t let you think, or sleep. It was as though someone had come with a fine razor, had made slits all along your chest. Not deep enough to kill, just enough for the blood to flow, to expose the nerves. The ache making you cry till you couldn’t breathe, till you gagged on your own sobs, drool trailing out of your mouth as you hunched over, agony coming out in strangled noises from your throat.

Then you’d thought of it in the next room, in the toilette. In that little green bottle. The one they’d give you at Hastings. The laudanum you took when the silence of the place started its screaming. You only use it now when the angry voice won’t stop. The voice that festers in your

122 head and makes everything rot around you. You brought the bottle when you’d moved some of your things to Dante’s rooms.

The laudanum soothed as you thought it would, allowed you to slip off into sleep. You’d woken later when he came back in. The sound of his boots thunking against the floor as he’d come in to look at you, but you’d pretended still to be fast asleep.

Now it’s morning, the haziness of the laudanum has left your head. He left too, early.

You heard him rattling about and the sound of the door as he left. He didn’t care to so much as see how you were before he left. He never said where he was going.

Staying in the bed doesn’t work. The room is pushing against you. The walls breathing when you’re not looking, expanding and contracting as if there is a ribcage behind the wallpaper.

The window is what you need. Fresh air, sunlight, these things will stop this crowding. You can breathe again if you have those things. You pull and pull, nails folding and tearing with the force, the ends of your fingers stinging at the roughness of the wood and its weight. You’ve forgotten that he nailed it shut. He did it to taunt you. Just like when he gave you the bullfinch.

Little bird in a cage. He put it in the living room. He wants you and the bird to study each other, notice how you are mirrors of each other. Only it sings and you can’t.

It was after Ophelia. You and Dante had both been there, at the pub with the others. And

Walter was exclaiming over Millais technique, how Millais had captured you in a way none of the rest of them had been able to yet. And everyone knew he wanted to use you as a model again, only he hadn’t the right subject yet. Dante wouldn’t wait for that to happen, for you to be in that studio alone with him again. The next week he was proclaiming his love for you in front of them all, telling them it would only be right if you modeled exclusively for him since you

123 would be his wife one day. It wouldn’t be proper for a wife to model for the friends of her husband. But he has not proposed.

He wanted him to vanish. He said to you, he had the gall to say to you when Walter took a turn for the worse, “Well we all knew he was sick, but we never knew it was so serious!” But he knew. He would get Walter drunker than the others, keep him out later. You told him he shouldn’t. You told him he should send him home. Why hadn’t they ever mentioned he was ill?

If the window can’t be opened at least there could be some sunshine. But there’s the drape. He tacked a drape over it. Wanting to hide from the sun after his late nights out. The coward. The sun can blind him in the mornings then. If it blinds him then he won’t see you in the corner with the bullfinch, reading your books. He won’t keep pressing both of you flat against the paper. The song of the bird gurgles to mute in its throat when he flattens it into his sketch. The birds he draws never look like they could sing. They always look taxidermied even when he draws them from life.

The drape gives with a satisfying tear, you can feel it as it happens, the sound like separating leathery skin from a long-dead corpse. It gives and dust rises, a cloud of death, ashy confetti for a funeral. The dust and you are both marking Walter’s death.

But the window isn’t enough. Your fingers smearing at its grimy surface only makes it worse. Your gut’s gone sour and your legs are shaking. It’s been awhile since it’s come on so strong, the anxiety that makes you want to scream, that makes you long to shatter things. Shatter glass. Glass. Glass bottle. You need the bottle. It softens all the hard edges of your thoughts.

Makes everything loosen.

124 It pushes away those acidic mutterings in the back of your mind, the voice saying he’s with Ruth, or with Annie. The little flashes of memories that surface: Annie stretching her leg out in a pose for him, her irritation when you entered the room. The way he watched Ruth on the stage when he brought you to one of her plays. When it won’t stop, you take the dose. Always only two drops because that’s what they advised.

And every time its effect a little lessened, the voices starting to push through before too long. Of course they’d tell you wrong: Mrs. Spencer, her dim-witted maid, the two of them offer something that might help but are ignorant to the way you should use it. That over time a larger dose is needed for it to remain effective. So it’ll be three drops this time. You’ll take three because that’s what’s needed. And the guilt is foolish because it’s the medicine they gave you.

The only cure that’s worked. It slows your fast words, your dizzying pacing. You took it last time you saw your parents and Lyddy and the four of you sat there in the sitting room and they all said you seemed to be getting better.

125 January 27, 1850

Walter told me that William’s studio is in a boy’s school, but I guess I couldn’t quite believe it till the carriage pulls up alongside the curb. Before the driver opens the door I hear them, the boys screaming, supposedly playing. And then, as the door swings outward, there they are, hoards of them, hair sticking up on end, smudges of dirt on their noses, mouths open bawling at each other throwing fists and vicious fistfuls of ice at each other’s faces. A few of them run up to the fence and cling to it, fingers crimson with cold, gripping the rails. I don’t want to get out. They’re like wild animals, they’ll attack me. The driver holds out his hand to help me down and I surrender, because what other choice do I have? I’m here now. I lean on his hand a bit more than is needed and watch as he drives off, his horse limping, the poor thing.

That’s the kind of carriage one gets with the small amount of coin I had on me, one that will pull pity out of your heart for the wretched creature that pulls it.

I’ve been standing here too long now, it’s only a matter of time before the pack on the other side of the fence begins lobbing their ice balls at me. They’re too distracted assaulting each other for the moment. I tug my coat collar up against the cold and duck my face down as I walk, hoping to remain invisible.

The door that leads to William’s studio won’t open at the first pull. I brace one of my boots on the doorframe and give a sharp jerk to yank it free. And when it finally opens, a rush of fetid, dank air spills out toward me, and the darkness beyond the door is hardly inviting, but I enter anyways, allow a moment for my eyes to adjust, then shut out the wintery gusts behind me.

The entrance is just large enough for me to stand in, and from there a narrow stairway lit by only one gas lamp.

126 Navigating the stairs is a tricky operation. The light from the lamp barely strong enough to help me make out each step, and flight of them so steep that one misplaced foot will surely end in broken limbs, if not a snapped neck. There’s no railing to be found either, so I splay my left hand out on the wall, smear it along wallpaper that bubbles and lifts beneath my fingers and feels oddly sticky.

As I enter the studio I spot William on the far side of the room, or what I take to be

William, only his lower half visible below the canvas he’s working on. A man reduced to baggy, paint-splattered pants and black boots that look just as thrashed by their wear in the studio. A grunt of acknowledgement comes from behind the canvas.

I stand there in the doorway, surveying my new workplace. It brings me back to the moment so many months ago when Margaretta lead me into Walter’s studio, my distaste for the rundown building bulging with the family’s forgotten furniture. As time passed it became a place where Walter shared the secrets of being an artist with me, teaching me how to improve my sketching, how to block out a scene before painting it, even how to clean and maintain my brushes should I ever own any one day.

There won’t be such conviviality here, I’m sure of it. William has vastly improved at tolerating me on evenings at the pub, but that doesn’t mean he likes me. I’ve never fooled myself into thinking that. But William is a more experienced artist and surely there’s something to be gleaned from him.

The room is bigger than Walter’s studio, but dingier, with its dark wood panelling and a wood burning stove off in the corner that coughs out smoke, and fills the room with a damp heat.

127 To the left of where William is working is what might be a table, but only its legs are visible, the rest covered by masses of paper and supplies: jars of pigment, brushes, oils, grubby palettes.

A bell rings somewhere off in another part of the school. It may as well be a gong the way it lingers in the air, hissing in my eardrums. It fills the room with its resonance, a welcome companion in the stark silence of the studio, but then comes a cacophony below us. The bell calls in the boys who are outside playing. The floorboards tremble with the opening and slamming of the outside doors and by the sheer force of noise and movement below, the last of the catcalls and laughter before the boys are suppressed back to silence in the classrooms.

The legs and feet in front of me seem not to notice, not even at a hoarse bellow from one of the boys which makes me start with surprise.

He intends to make me wait. Walter was always so polite, would drop his work when I entered and rush over to greet me, ask me about the carriage ride over, how my family was. I won’t get such pleasantries from William. But that’s just fine, he’s playing the same game my father does, and if he thinks it’ll rattle me, or give him some kind of authority he can think again.

If he can’t be bothered to speak I will. “Sure are a noisy lot downstairs! You think the schoolmaster might teach them some manners,” I say.

“Mmm . . . ”

I step forward through the door, pull a kerchief from my skirt pocket and rub at the dirt on the hand I used to steady myself going up the stairs. It must be soot from the lamp, the more I rub, the more it smears around. I give up, tuck the offensive hand in my pocket instead.

“May I ask what you’re working on?” I say continuing toward him.

128 “The only work you need concern yourself with is that which you will be posing for in a moment.”

I am eleven again, pestering my father, balancing the smooth, cool steel of a fork on my fingers. Asking if he’ll teach me how it’s made. And he tells me he doesn’t have time for such trivialities. That he has enough sons to help him with his work and I’m not one of them. I’m not one of them. Those words have never been smudged away the way time does to other memories.

I can still recall how he never even bothered to look at me, his hair stringy with sweat and one of the knuckles on his left hand was oozing a bit of blood where he’d bashed it up at some point during his work. Girls could run through the workshop, a flurry of questions spewing from their mouths, but when you became a woman, the questions were supposed to cease.

“The hook on the wall,” William says.

I wait for a moment, thinking he will continue, but he hasn’t even bothered to let the thought complete itself and come out through his mouth. “Yes?” I say.

“You’ll find the costume there.”

“I don’t see any — ”

“Behind the door.” He insists on remaining a disembodied voice behind the canvas.

A tingling sensation high up in my nose distracts me, a sneeze building. And it’s no wonder, what with the dust and smoke so thick in the air. One can practically see the combination of the two wafting about the place. There’s only one window in the place, a small one so filthy that only a few slants of light manage to break through, angling crazily towards the floor. And these beams transform into seemingly solid, bizarre bits of architecture with the density of the air they catch on. I taste it on my tongue too, the dust, a paste of it coating my

129 sticky lips, congesting down in my throat, coagulating in my lungs, the smoke adding a sting to it. My eyes water with the effort of holding back the sneeze. My vision so blurry I have to feel for the bundle of clothes hanging from the hook.

“I’ve hung a drape back there in corner for changing,” William informs me.

I nod, although after I realize he can’t see me nodding, but I suppose he doesn’t really care if he gets a response or not, only that I get changed, and so I head towards where he pointed, back in the corner across from the door, a grungy piece of brocade tacked up on some kind of frame. The construction is haphazard as if the thing might fall apart as I’m standing behind it.

But it’s a place to retreat from his stern presence in the room. His flat tone, his way of making me feel like more of hindrance than a help, leave my mouth sour with anxiety.

I thumb the tears from my eyes, the sneeze still burning high up in my nose. I will myself to ignore it, slip out of my dress and hang it on a sad excuse for a coat hanger. The poor bit of wire looks as though it’s failed several times at its job, completely collapsing under the weight of clothing, only to be re-bent and reformed for a task it’s clearly not up to doing. I give it a second chance anyways.

The costume is two layers. The first is an orange robe that doesn’t cover my arms. I’ve never worn something this revealing outside of my nightgowns and shifts. I want to slip my jacket back over myself as soon as I put it on, the room is not near warm enough to wear this robe in. The second part of the costume is another shorter robe, it’s cream coloured with a green border and covers my right arm at least when I drop it down over me, but doesn’t add much in the way of warmth. My left arm is still left exposed and for some reason the nakedness of that one limb makes me feel off-balance. And the costume is made of wool too. I’ve left some of my

130 undergarments on as a shield, but as I re-enter the studio from behind the brocade I can feel the prickly material rasping against any skin left uncovered: my shoulders and arms mostly. One would think that the costume being wool would make it warmer, but the robes, like the rest of the room, feel faintly damp, and make any of the drafts in the room catch on me and cling to me.

The warmth from the stove not constant enough to chase them away.

I walk back to the center of the room, my eyes watering again, I can feel it still, the sneeze, I wriggle my nose to combat it, rub the bridge of it between my index finger and thumb, hoping to sooth it. And then there’s the release. A tremendous sneeze. I had fooled myself so entirely that I could keep it from coming that I’m left entirely unprepared for it. Can’t even get my hands to my handkerchief in time. But God it feels so good, the release of that tickling, burning. Explosive in sound, because I notice the figure behind the canvas twitches and lets out a swear, explosive in an entirely other more repulsive sense. Because, as I realize that I’ve startled William and made him botch something on the canvas, I’ve also sneezed out a glob of phlegm. I felt it coming, my hands panicking, not knowing whether to cover my mouth as they are, or do as my mother would wish, grab the kerchief. And failing at both I’m left horrified, staring down at this shining little glob on the floor in front of me. Repulsed. The handkerchief balled in my hand I study it. I could take the kerchief, use it to wipe up the mess, relieve myself of the horrifying knowledge of its presence on the floor. But the floor itself is disgusting to begin with, and I can only imagine how grungy the kerchief will look after. My boot, I could just smear it with my boot. But that’s something some foul child would do. Even if he won’t treat me like a lady, I at least ought to carry on some pretension of being one. And so I release my fingers

131 from the grip on the handkerchief, pull my hands from my pockets, draw in a deep breath and put all of my will power into pretending nothing has occurred.

And William has moved away from the canvas now, the entirety of his body visible to me, “What in God’s name was that? I’ll have to repaint this section now.”

“I’m terribly sorry,” I say. Really I’m more relieved than sorry, am left imagining the horror if I had stooped down to mop my own phlegm off the floor and he’d caught me in the act of it. How on earth could I have explained that?

“Next time you might try to give some warning,” he says.

“Of course.”

“I have something else for you.” He picks up an orange bowl that’s been lying on the ground beside him, walks over and hands it to me. Lying limp at the bottom of the bowl is a sponge.

“And what is this for?”

“A prop. You’ll be holding it for the pose. I want you to have the bowl in your left hand and the sponge in your right. And I’d like you to stand over here.” He leads me over to a patch on the floor where he’s painted a globby black x and once I’m positioned over it he passes me the sponge and the bowl. Then he begins moving limbs where he wishes them to be. His hands are flecked with wet paint that he hasn’t bothered to clean off, and some of it smears off on my wrists as he moves them. I’m turned so that I’m angled towards the right, my left hand cradling the bowl at the level of my waist, my right hovering just over the bowl with the sponge as if I’ve just drawn water from it. He tilts my head so that I look down and to the right at something, or

132 someone. It’s all very mysterious. Walter explained the painting beforehand so I’d understand, does William wait till later to do that?

He’s pushing down hard on my shoulders now. “Your left leg, I’d like you to bend it a little,” he says. Then he steps back a couple of paces, appraises his work, nods and draws back to where his equipment is on the far wall. He gathers a pad of paper, some pencils, and pulls a stool closer to me, it screeches angrily across the floor, my muscles pull cringe, but as he settles himself I try to relax again.

I hear the sharp slashing of his sketching on the pad, reminding me of the first few times he drew me back at Walter’s, and then I focus on the pose. So odd to have objects in my hands, their weight a liability, or the bowl’s weight at least because as the time passes it seems to grow heavier and heavier in my hand. Slippery too, as it balances in my moist palm, my wrist beginning to ache. The sponge is obviously not a fresh one, seems to be coated in some kind of sticky grease. Try not to think about what that might be, what it might have been used to clean up. Did he even bother rinsing it? Probably not for a mere model. If I’m going to be forced to hold this every day for a month one would have thought he could have, at the very least, provided me with a clean one.

And then, as my body begins to numb into the pose, the bowl, the sponge begin to lose meaning in my hands. It’s like the game Lyddy and I use to play after Mama taught us grammar, where we’d repeat the new words aloud to each other till they became sounds without sense.

The words and their meanings split apart, no longer able to communicate anything but empty sounds. Maybe everything is this way: you say something enough, you touch it, taste it, or feel it for too long and it slowly begins to break down. Meaning crumbling away from it in time. The

133 first perception the only pure one. The bowl loses its “bowlness” as my hands lose their feeling until it’s indiscernible where the fingers end and the bowl begins. They melt into one another, just has the sponge feels like it’s seeping into my palm, merging there. What a horrible thought, not to be able shake this sticky, filthy thing from me.

The more I think about the two things in my hands, the less I’ve been thinking about my body and how the awkward twist of my neck is beginning to wear on me. The tension of the muscles burn at the nape of my neck. My bent left leg prickles with pins and needles. It’s an apt phrase, that, because that is how it feels, needles and pins all being driven into me at the same time.

“Alright then,” says William. I’ve almost forgotten he’s in the room, his presence and the sound of him shuffling paper comes back into my ears. “That’s been ten minutes, you can have a break if you wish.”

I put my left leg down, it’s dumb with blood-loss and feels as though it doesn’t belong to me, this warm, tingling lump connected to my right hip. Makes me wonder what an amputation feels like because right now the presence of the leg is still there even through the numbness, but for it to be a missing sensation altogether, how curious and horrific that must feel. I rub the blood down into my leg again, hating the jumping of the nerve endings at my touch, then I dig my thumb into the muscles of my neck, rubbing away the strain there. A few more little stretches that Dante has taught me to help keep limber during the work, and then I take a walk about the room.

I miss having Margaretta there. William is busy studying his work. Walter would get wrapped up in the same thing, but I could always talk to Margaretta, examine her needlepoint, or

134 ask her about what balls she’d been too recently, and what distinguished guests her mother had entertained. I doubt William will have any dainties or tea for me either.

If only I could sneak a look at the canvas, but I don’t dare to. He’s looking back and forth between it and the sketch he’s just made of me. And even if he were to leave the room I’m not sure I’d feel comfortable straying too far from the place he’s marked for me to stand. It’s as if he’s marked his territory, dog-like, at the four corners of his work area. There’s no smell of piss, but William’s posture while he works warns me not to draw too near. He leans forward with his shoulders drawn up, if he had hackles I’m sure those would be raised too.

The rest of the day follows the same rhythm. William readjusts me into the pose, I hold it for ten minutes while he flips page after page over on his sketchbook, sometimes making growls of frustration from across the room. At the end of the day he bids me leave with a, “That’ll be all then, you may go now. Be back two days from now. The costume will be in exactly the same place. I’ll have someone drop off your pay at that hat shop you work in.” That’s as much as he’ll give me, and I know he won’t say more because he’s retreated behind his canvas again.

The next couple of weeks fall into a repetition. I gather up the costume, change and pose while he hardly bothers to let a sound crawl its way out of his throat. I begin wondering if vocal chords have the capability of breaking down and rotting away without use. I hope so. Anxiety at working with him shifts into tedium, then into unbearable boredom and finally irritation and when preparatory sketches are over I’ve had enough. I’ve taken to this new task in my life hoping to learn something and he gives me nothing, so I tell him so.

“Just because Walter taught you doesn’t mean I’m required to,” he says.

“But I thought the group of you encouraged the idea of women painting.”

135 “Some of us do, it’s true.”

“But you don’t.” This is impertinent of me, but after all the silence surely I’ve earned the right to speak up for once.

“You want to be treated the same, except when you don’t.”

“And what does that mean?”

“You could hardly stomach it the first time we went out to that pub. You were practically hysterical.”

I change hastily and leave. From the corner of my eye I notice that William is still standing where I’ve left him during our conversation, watching me. But I sweep out of the studio without so much as glaring at him on my way out.

His remark was unfair and he knows it, I’ve adjusted to the pubs and the other places I’ve gone to with them since then, learning to drive men away with a sharp remark or two. I bring a fan sometimes and give them a good rap with it if they won’t take the hint.

I’ll finish my work on this painting with him, so as not to make myself look willful and difficult to the others in the brotherhood and then I’ll never bother working with him again.

136 February 17 1850

Dante accosts me leaving Mrs. Tozer’s. “Lizzie! Lizzie slow down!” he calls, grasping me by my shoulder. Jeanette still walks home with me from the shop and pauses abruptly, staring with startled interested at this man who has boldly called me by my first name and touched me in such a familiar manner. I’m sure I’ll be the subject of gossip the next day for all of Mrs. Tozer’s girls. Before I would have considered the thought of them all murmuring about me something horrible, I valued my invisibility so, but there’s a secret pleasure to it now.

“Jeanette,” I say. “Carry on without me. Mr. Rossetti will escort me the rest of the way and I wouldn’t want to make you late waiting for me.” This will add another layer of mystery to it, asking her to leave now. Her imagination over-inflating the spaces I’ve left for her, the story she’ll pass on bloated with speculation, pushed to bursting with the hot air of the others as they’ll pass it around the shop to each other.

I pretend a front of irritation at Dante’s boldness, pulling my arm away from him. “You might have made at least a pretense of being polite in front of Jeanette. Imagine what she’ll tell the other girls.”

“Oh forgive me Miss Siddall! How awful of me!” His voice stained with sarcasm he continues on, “Let me honour you in the way you so deserve.” He makes a deep bow, pretends to lift a hat he does not wear, and then grabs at my hand, pressing his lips to the back of it, letting them linger a little too long. That small oval of skin caught in the space between his lips moist with his breath. The street has forgotten us, the flick and hiss of the lantern-lighter up on his ladder igniting the wicks of street lights. No one else notices this moment between us. He

137 straightens, realizes maybe that he’s said more in that gesture than he meant to because he starts to pull away from me.

“You’re shivering,” he says. “Cold?”

“Very,” I answer.

“Well I’m sorry to have kept you standing here. Lead on then, show me where I’m walking you to.” He follows me a couple of paces back so that I can’t read his face, only hear him behind me, his breathing louder than usual, shallow.

He makes a grumbling sound behind me, clearing his throat, “You haven’t been out with us lately. It’s been a few weeks now.”

“William is finished sketching me. He says it’ll be around a month or so before he requires me for the final painting.”

“That’s no reason you can’t spend time with our little group though.”

“I’ve been working here, doesn’t give me much time for socializing.”

“We could be socializing at this very moment.”

“I’m expected at home.”

The street we’ve turned onto is a narrower one. It catches our voices, throws them back, taunting us with the awkwardness we’ve stumbled into. Neither of us wanting to talk about earlier.

“And tomorrow?” he says. “What if you had a very important meeting, say with an artist who was willing to critique your work for you? Could be very helpful for your advancement.

Other people might have to pay for such instruction. You could tell your parents that couldn’t you?”

138 I stop. He doesn’t notice right away and his shoulder brushes against mine. “You’d look at my work?” I say.

He pulls his fingers from his gloves, breathes into them. “Of course,” he says, keeping his gaze buried into his cupped hands as he rubs them together for warmth and then slides the gloves back over them. They’re thick gray wool ones, a string of yarn hanging like a tail from one finger that’s begun to unravel at the tip. Another finger, the index one, is missing entirely from the glove, and I notice he tucks that finger in with the one next to it so that the wool around both of them has begun to stretch out of shape. It’s no surprise they don’t hold the heat. He ought to have someone pull them apart and re-knit them. I never really caught on to knitting, the needles always sliding about in my hands. I’ve never grasped them with much authority, not like my sewing needle. Not like my pencil.

“Walter’s the only one who has ever seen your work. I can’t see why he’s been so favored by you.”

I smile at his feigned jealousy, “No one but Walter ever asked before.”

“Do me a favor,” he continues. “Bring me one of those sketches you showed Walter, and then bring me something new that you’ve just finished. I want to see how you’ve changed, where you’ve progressed.”

We continue walking, Dante leading. Me retreating behind him, hesitant. Knowing that when one of them spontaneously offers something, you take it, but wishing that it wasn’t tomorrow that we had to meet, that I could have more time selecting the two sketches. There has to be some progress visible there, so that they won’t lose interest and abandon the idea of instructing me. Or those among them who are interested in instructing me.

139 “And where will we meet?” I ask.

“There’s a pub a couple of blocks from your milliner’s shop. The Swan, it’s called. Has a big sign you can’t possibly miss.”

“But if the other girls were to see me go in there alone . . . ”

“Be sly about it then. Besides, why worry what they think? They mean nothing to you.”

Dante lives with a freedom he’s invented for himself. It’s naive for him to think that a woman can go about constructing the same kind of freedoms. Sometimes I wonder if he’s forgotten that

I’m a woman, that I can’t do as they do. But then there was the moment earlier. No, he knows

I’m a woman. He just seems to expect that I can somehow step outside the boundaries. Both he and Walter do. I want to dismiss this is as childish fantasy, but then I think it might be possible, if only I could escape my family.

“And there’s my family,” I say to him.

“That’s difficult, yes,” he says. “One can always find a way of twisting things though.

Creating an illusion of social acceptability.”

“Is that what you do?”

A sound of amusement rumbles from his throat, half hum, half expelling air. “How different you are becoming from that quiet girl I saw back in Walter’s studio all those many months ago.”

“Is it an improvement?” I stretch my legs in strides as long as I can manage with all my bulky petticoats and skirts. What expression settles across his face? Is there irritation there with his amusement? But this part of the street is darker than the others and his face is hidden to me.

“Well?” I ask, pushing for something.

140 “Of course! Of course it is.” He pauses to pick his next words, “You might not want to lose that lady-likeness altogether though. It’s what sets you apart from the others. The other models. Never be coarse like them, it’s what makes the men respect you, that you can be a bit more aloof.”

A delicate balance. It would be easier for them if I were a man. I wouldn’t have to apologize, ask questions to gauge how my words sit with him. They encourage this boldness in me when it entertains them, and then quell it when it doesn’t suit them. I am constantly asking permission for the openness they pretend to grant. I want to bicker with Dante, make him explain himself further and point out the hypocrisies of what he says. But there’s an aim there, behind his words. A couple of the brotherhood’s other models have come along with us at times to the pubs. Once there was Ariadne with her plaited, black hair and Beatrice with her pouting lips. The brotherhood uses these women as nude models to practice their sketching, but they haven’t been in any of their paintings. They’re women of the moment, each time out it seems to be a different pair of models, the Brotherhood not seeming to settle on any of them as subjects for paintings. They invite these women out with us a couple of times and then they vanish again, off to work for someone else. The women are a graceful arc of spine they admire, a curve of shoulder and the right fleshiness of the face to scratch on their sketchbooks, nothing they bother spending the time to immortalize.

These models are full of easy rapture for the artists. I watch them at the table, bending too close to the men to listen to their words, erupting with practiced laughter at jokes that often aren’t amusing enough for the enthusiasm of noise they give them. Maybe they practice these noises at home, sit in front of mirrors rehearsing their act, pushing laughter out, listening to the

141 sound as though their throats were instruments they’re learning, listening for a false note that will make the laughter sound off.

How exhausting this continuous performance of charm. And it’s pathetic really, because can’t they see how the men respond? How the men smile at them, but it’s the kind of smile they’d give to a clever child. Not a sincere smile, just as much of an act. Sometimes when the other models leave early they talk about them after.

They’d brought a girl named Mary, or was it Daisy? Daisy I think. She was a buxom one and a bit slow. They’d laugh at her any time she didn’t catch on to their sarcasm, and silly girl, she’d laugh with them not knowing the laugher was at her expense.

“I don’t have hands enough for her,” William roared with laughter after she left. “My god what a sumptuous body. You’d need both hands to cup just one of those breasts.”

I hated it when they were coarse like this. It was clear they’d forgotten that I was still at the table with them. But I took part in mocking the other models while they were there. I have a knack for it it seems, finding cutting things to say.

Daisy, she was wearing this leaf green dress, a colour that didn’t compliment her whatsoever, in fact it looked positively garish and made her complexion look sickly. So I told her, “My what a lovely dress. So green. That colour suites you so well.”

Johnny snickered into his hand. Other men might not have understood that I was attacking her, but the Brotherhood were artists. They had a keen eye for shape and colour and knew the dress was appalling on her.

142 There was a bit of guilt at first, that we were tearing apart those who could not defend themselves. But it was their own fault really. No one asked them to make such fools of themselves and if they were too dim to figure out that they were being mocked then they weren’t hurt by the things we said.

My act is far more subtle. I don’t have to try as hard as them, but I do mark the things the men say. Things they find alluring about the women that I slowly work into my own habits as though it were a natural transformation. I’ll bite my lip while thinking, knowing it’s something that arouses them, or fix my hair so that a single strand of it looks as though it’s worked its way loose on the walk over. Always making sure that these adjustments occur long after the men have talked about them. I’ve also learned the benefits of silence, the way the secret layers of the men begin to rise to the surface later on in the evening, and if I’m quiet I can fade into the background. They forget my presence and speak of heartaches or frustrations far too personal for someone like me to hear. Dante is always the most intimate by the end of the evening sometimes embarrassing himself with talk of his failures with women. He is obsessed by us, the fairer sex, but no matter how many of us he commits to canvas, he’s never any closer to making sense of us. When the other models flirt with him, which they always seem to, the wit he flashes at the men sputters and fails when he tries to turn it to the women. He resorts instead to silence and a polite smile. With the men he is charming and elegant in his speech, and that’s what pushes the women to pursue him so. And then when he can find nothing to say to them, they become easily offended, sure that his charm doesn’t carry over to them simply because he isn’t interested.

143 The silence between Dante and I has shifted from awkward to companionable with the few words we’ve traded back and forth between each other. We’re almost there and I realize that before we turn onto my street I’ll have to ask him to head back to wherever it is that he lives. It’s far too risky for him to come all the way to the house. Someone might see him out the windows, my family or one of the neighbors.

I gather a breath, feel the air like a mallet of ice striking my lungs.

“I should leave you here shouldn’t I?” he asks, anticipating my words.

“Yes, thank you.”

“It’s been a pleasure, Lizzie,” he says. We stand together, a companionable pause before we depart. He, huddled in his jacket, self-consciously brushes away the frost that’s coated his beard, scrubbing at the whiskers.

“What if I can’t manage our meeting tomorrow?” I say.

“You’ll find a way.” He shifts his weight back and forth from foot to foot, to warm himself, or maybe out of nerves, it’s hard to tell. “And if you don’t, well then I’ll have a couple of pints by myself, enjoy the warm ruckus of the place and head my own way. I’ll stay for an hour and then I’ll leave.”

“I’ll do my best.”

“I’m sure you will. It’s in your favor after all. To be there.” He stops his rocking back and forth, gives the collar of his jacket a tug, pulling it closer to his face. “Well, I’ll be off then.

Have a good evening Miss Siddall.” He winks, hoping to come off cute, but it looks unpracticed and clumsy, almost comical and I want to laugh, but I don’t.

“Thank you for accompanying me, Dante. Good evening.”

144 He nods, then spins around, heading back past the baker’s which is thankfully closed for the evening. He raises a hand for a carriage that’s traveling at a casual pace further along the next street, then he begins to jog. I’m tempted to watch his chase after the carriage, but turn around instead, heading towards home, preparing a speech for my mother. My father, luckily, will either be working late in the back, or will have turned in to sleep. He always goes to bed before the rest of us, my mother staying up and tidying the house without complaint while he snores away upstairs.

The door needs its customary kick on the bottom corner to get it open: it sticks now and then when the house shifts and resettles. The foyer beyond is a mouth of darkness that rivals the gloom outside, but in the next room there’s the dim haze of glow from the rush light in the kitchen. Water slooshes in the sink not visible to me yet, Lyddy and one of my other sisters scouring the pots and pans from tonight’s dinner no doubt.

The air from the kitchen, at first a welcome contrast from the bone-seeping cold of outside, is stifling after only a little while. The heat from the range mixing with the smoke from the rush light. The smoke grinds its course up my nostrils and down my throat, rubbing them raw, gathering thickly in my lungs until I cough and splutter.

Lyddy glances over her shoulder, face a pale sliver in the hollow light, her shoulders a dark, hunched mass below. She doesn’t smile, or speak a word, only nods and then returns to her work.

Mama sits at the kitchen table, the rush light nearest to her so she can work on her mending, but even with it so close she has to lean in to catch what little light it offers. Her eyes scrunched to make out what she’s doing. I notice for the first time how deeply etched the lines

145 around her eyes have become. I can’t remember when they first started appearing; were they just there one day? Or is it like the wearing away of a creek bed, a slow erosion? My fingers trace around the corner of my own eye, find nothing.

She hasn’t heard me enter the room, but eventually feels me watching. She sets her stitching down with a sigh, whatever garment she was working on an anonymous pool of cloth on the table.

“Good evening, Elizabeth.”

“Good evening, Mama.” How to frame it, how to make Dante’s invitation into something innocent. No words are coming and Mama knows, but she waits anyways, fingers steepled and drawn up to her mouth as if she expects me to speak any second.

“Is there something you would like to say, Elizabeth?”

Words writhe in my mouth like fat fish, twisting on my tongue, falling out in a wet jumble. “There’s another painter who’s taken an interest in me as a model, Mama.” I pause, the lie slowly oozing forward in my brain, almost a formed thought. “He wishes to interview me as

Mr. Deverell did, at his parent’s house.”

“Very polite of him,” Mama replies.

Lyddy is watching, her hands motionless in the cloudy, brown water. Her eyes on my hands make me notice them for the first time. I’ve been massaging them, twisting them into each other. Remember earlier the frustration of my fingers fumbling to catch stray hangnails, the infuriating throb of pain as I peeled away the thin slivers of skin, exposing strips of rosy rawness.

I fiddle with my hands when nervous, when lying.

“And is there a calling card?” Mama says.

146 “No, I’m afraid not.”

A rumble of disapproval threatens at the back of her throat.

“But he’s told me the time I’m to visit them at their home, after I finish at Mrs. Tozer’s tomorrow, which is perfect because then Jeanette can act as a chaperone.”

Lyddy has a plate in her hands now, she rubs it slowly with the dishcloth. She’s long since rubbed any dinner remains off it. Her hand dragging back and forth across the same spot.

A repetitive movement that doesn’t fool me.

“And you’ve asked her about this already then? Whether or not she can accompany you?”

“Oh yes.”

“Very obliging of her. And very odd of them, having you over at such an hour.”

“Well they’re aware of my work at Mrs. Tozer’s, Mama, they didn’t want me losing time coming to see them.”

“Very odd indeed.” Mama gathers up the garment in front of her, rolling the white fabric between her fingertips.

Lydia has switched to a bowl now, our little sister Clara, watching her, irritated. Not perceptive enough to know why it’s taking so long. She twists and untwists the dishtowel, her hair creeping out of the mouths of the pins that hold her hair back, a few strands sticking to her cheek.

“I’ll allow it,” Mama says. “But with an increase in experience should come an increase in wage. Be subtle about this; a lady is always subtle about her demands.”

“Yes, Mama. Thank you, Mama.”

147 I join Lydia and Clara at the sink, hang pots and pans on their hooks, drop fistfuls of silverware into drawers. Mama continues stitching behind us with a rustle of fabric and the occasional click of needle against bobbin and then she yawns.

“Good evening, girls,” she says, raising her bulk from the table and gathering her things.

“Good evening, Mama,” we say, three voices blending in polite chorus.

“Mind you put out the light before you head upstairs.”

“Yes, Mama,” we mumble our compliance to her. Mama, that name used to mean the lavender smell of her as I pressed my child’s face to the round squish of her stomach. Mama.

Someone to tell lies to now, someone to escape.

When the bedroom door closes Lyddy turns to me, “It’s the one who gave you that eraser isn’t it? It’s him you’re meeting.”

“Yes.”

“You won’t be calling on him at his parent’s house will you?” Lyddy says.

Clara sucks in her breath like she’s trying to inhale the scandal Lydia has spewed into the room, probably not even fully understanding what Lydia is implying, but picking up on the tone of it.

“Where will she be meeting him then?” Clara asks.

“Are you implying that I’m lying?” I say.

“I saw your hands,” Lydia replies.

“That proves nothing.”

148 “What was she doing with her hands?” whines Clara, bouncing from foot to foot, frustrated at being left out. She rises to the balls of her feet trying to make up for the difference in height, she so much shorter than us.

“Keep to your own business,” Lydia cuffs her with her words and then turns to me, lowering her voice, “We’ll see.”

She is assured of my doom, that these men will pull me in with their charm and ruin me, because that’s all she’s ever been familiar with. I ought to be the one reprimanding her for the presumption of judging me this way, of thinking somehow that she knows more. I’ve relied too much on her in the past, inflated her sense of wisdom. She doesn’t understand what she speaks of, her naivety showing at the seams of her melodramatic stance on the whole thing. Next time

I’ll be the one to raise my voice and put her in her place.

She’s upstairs before I am because I still have a few odds and ends to put away, and the coals in the range have to be raked and readied for tomorrow. By the time I’ve entered our room she’s asleep, or pretending anyways. I slide into the bed beside her, turn away from her in the dark. Her misunderstanding of this whole thing like a sore tooth, the longer I leave it the more the niggling pain builds, every nudge at it a sharp reminder of the distance growing between us.

149 February 18, 1850

In The Swan a man plays wildly on an accordion, standing on a table top near the door as

I come in. He gives me a wink when he sees me enter, his fingers blunt and hairy tapping over the keys, they look like the legs of tarantulas. The pads of his fingers so coated in soot and grease that the keys, already yellowed with age, are also smeared with black fingerprints. The huddles of people at the tables fill the place with a rough sea of movement, waves of hands bouncing up and down with clapping. Some keep the time of the song, but others have deviated from the rhythm, always lagging behind so that the room has dissolved into a cacophony that sounds like music only to the drunks.

I imagine my family back at home bent over hot bowls of stew, more potato soup really with a few bits of meat and carrot thrown in here and there for variety. They’ll trade a couple thin lengths of dialogue, bland questions that they’ve answered for each other nearly every day.

Eye contact isn’t really necessary because they’re not really trying to connect with one another.

Only trying to hold back the silence that sweeps in to smother without fail at some point each evening.

The manic tune of the accordion dies now, the clapping and stomping stop a little after.

The men fall back into their barks of mirth, their voices rising loudly into the best bits of the stories they tell every time they’re here. They thump each other on the backs with affection, snort beer out of their noses in appreciation of each other’s jokes.

One of the bar whores brushes past me, her eyebrows raised in condescension at my simple dress and my bare face. Her own is caked with powder, a poppy red pigment traced on her lips. The kohl she’s used to darken around her eyes has smudged so it looks like one of the

150 men might have given her a hint of a black eye. Not an uncommon thing to see, but with her it’s just a careless application of makeup. These women used to fill me with a mixture of disgust and fear. Fear, because when the rest of the world looks on me and my new profession they put us in the same group. I’ve learned to suppress this feeling, look on them with disdain instead. Maybe even a little pity for the ones who so obviously suffer in their role. Dante’s advice from yesterday stays with me, that despite what society might think, I’m of a different breed than these women.

If Lyddy could see that, how I traverse the space between the women outside the pub and the women within it, never quite in either camp, maybe then she would understand.

The back of Dante’s head, at first obscured by a cluster of men pushing past, emerges from the crowd, familiar whorls of dark hair so often matted with his lack of care, and the confident slope of his shoulders. A pint of ale now visible in his hand as I approach. There’s a little puddle of spilt beer that he wets his finger in and uses like paint, smearing curlicues over the surface of the table: the idle fidgeting of an artist. Standing behind him for a moment I envision a bold greeting, my hand reaching down and gripping his shoulder, dipping my face into his field of vision with a smile and a “Good evening, Mr. Rossetti.” But I round the table keeping my space from him instead and pick the chair furthest from him.

“Lizzie!” he says, using his shirt sleeve to smudge out his doodles. “I knew you would be sly enough!”

“I managed.”

“Did you manage to let the other shop girls see you come here, vulnerable young woman entering a pub unescorted? I wouldn’t want you to miss out on the opportunity of making a scandal of yourself.”

151 “No, no I don’t think they saw.” My voice sounding lame, his own so bright and cunning. I’ve imagined this scenario, snatches of it throughout the day, myself boisterous and witty and he utterly captivated. But that fantasy woman, that more vivid version of myself has never existed. I can only imagine later the clever things she might have said. I’m like the battered bonnets at the back of the racks at Mrs. Tozer’s. The ones that, for whatever reason, colour or kind of fabric, never managed to sell. Mrs. Tozer eventually has to reduce the price.

She puts them on another rack for this purpose, pats the dust off and tries to perk them up again, but they can’t help but keep blending into the background. Camouflaged into their surroundings is all they’ve ever been, why should they attract attention now? The only ones who ever notice them are the women who come in with not much money, looking for a bargain.

Dante rests his jaw in curve of his palm, his fingers splayed up along his cheek. Large hands, and whereas Walter had thin, delicate fingers, Dante’s are thick with big knuckles, a few flecks of royal blue and violet paint spotting them, and the same paint embedded in his cuticles.

“So quiet,” he says, smiling, his fingers pulling at the skin of his face making the smile come out lopsided. “You’ve always been so quiet when we’ve all gone out together.”

I return his smile, mine hesitant, faked. How am I supposed to respond? I leave the stare of those large eyes. A man stands behind a group of his friends at the table next to us. His hips swaying, shoulders and torso following through with the movement. His drunkenness throwing his body off like a great oak caught in a wind; his feet rooted but the rest of him unstable. He has a sweaty pint gripped in his hand, full almost to the brim, amber beer glowing in the dim light.

He leans forward to better hear the story being told, his raised hand following the lean, the beer cutting an angle up to the edge of the glass until it is trickling, dribbling onto the shoulder of his

152 friend. Then he leans back laughing and his friend looks around confused, too liquored up himself to figure out why his shoulder feels damp.

I laugh into my fists at the look on the man’s face, his fingers patting at his damp shoulder and then he tugs a bit of his shirt up to his mouth, sucks on it thoughtfully. The understanding spreads across his face, and he digs his friend in the ribs in irritation, all but knocking him over.

“What?” says Dante, his face leaving his hand now, looking about in confusion. “Do tell me what the source of all your amusement is.”

“Oh,” I say, gathering a lungful of air to collect myself. “That man just splashed beer all over his friend. The look on his face! He was so bewildered!” I let loose another hiss of barely contained laughter into my hand, my stomach aching with it.

“Cruel woman,” Dante says, “laughing at the misfortunes of others. Come let’s get you a pint of your own!” He tugs at the sleeve of a passing barmaid, “A pint for the lady if you don’t mind.” At the word “lady” the maid’s lips pinch together. She nods curtly and heads toward the bar.

“And how is it at the shop?” Dante asks me, “How are all the bonnets doing?”

“The bonnets are doing just lovely, thank you.”

“Well I’m very glad to hear it,” he says, “But you, you must be itching to get back in the studio for William, yes?”

My beer arrives, sloshing over the rim and down the side of the glass. I fetch out my handkerchief, wipe the side of it before taking a sip, the warm bitterness of the ale on my tongue, hoping he’ll forget his question.

153 “Well?” he asks.

“I’ll be happy for the pay, yes. When I go back.”

“The pay?” Dante says, leaning back on his chair, bringing his elbows up onto the table with a thick thud. “Are you and William not getting along then?”

I’m folding my kerchief up into neat little squares sliding my fingers along the edges to reinforce the crease.

“Oh come on,” he says, “It can’t be that terrible.”

“I wouldn’t know,” I reply. “He hardly speaks to me.”

Dante brings his fists up before his face, breathes, “Hmm,” into them.

“I think he might hate me.”

“Oh no, no, no, that’s not the case,” he pauses thinking. “I think . . . Well what you need to know is that artists like to have their egos stroked. Some of us that is. I certainly don’t! But

William, he might respond if you were to take an interest in his work.”

“He wouldn’t let me see it before!”

“Don’t think there isn’t a perfectly good reason why we all call him ‘Mad.’ He’s a temperamental fellow. But you’re not the same as us. You have powers that you seem to have no idea how to use. Make those dove gray eyes of yours glow at him. Use your feminine charms.”

“You mean flirt with him?”

“Only a little, Miss Siddall.” His lips pull at the rim of his glass, another sip of beer,

“You do know how to flirt don’t you?” Blood jetting hotly through the veins of my neck, the thud, thud, thud of my heart. Don’t look up at him. His eyes hunting me down from across the

154 table. My eyes rest on my fingers instead, still trying to fold the kerchief, it’s as small as it’ll get.

Perhaps I should unfold it, start again.

“I see I’ve embarrassed you. I do apologize. But I’m serious, compliment him on his work, on his mastery and skill and I think you’ll find that he’ll begin to warm up to you. It’s either that or you better be prepared for a miserable few weeks. Much better to have an amiable environment in the studio.”

“Thank you, Dante,” I say, putting the kerchief away at last, cupping both my hands around the glass and drawing it towards me. The trails of beer left behind look like some foreign language spread across the table.

“But we’re not here to talk about William, you were supposed to bring me some of your work,” he says. “Did you?”

I pull out two small rolls of paper from the pockets of my skirt and look for a clean spot on the table to unroll them.

“You seem to have drenched your side of the table. Pull up that chair next to me.” The chair screeches across the wood, heavier than expected. I lay flat the first of the sketches, one of the ones I brought to Walter what seems ages ago, the picture of the girl selling flowers. Beside it I unroll another, a woman in a fine gown studying the vegetables at a stand near our home.

Dante rests his elbows on the table again, his head hanging over my work. I lean back, chest contracting, breathing shallower as if the laces on my corset have pulled tighter on their own. He leans over towards my newer sketch, his shoulder grazing against mine. The two of us brushing against each other, making me think of the way his lips pressed against the skin of my knuckles last night. Our silence so in contrast with the jabbering shouts around us, beer mugs

155 thundering in rhythm on the table behind as a group of men sing a favorite drinking song. What does he notice when he looks at another’s drawings? What is he looking for? Sharp, deft lines, smooth shading or maybe a flicker of emotion caught in the sketches of the faces. I’m not sure

I’m strong enough to have pulled off any of these things yet, though I’m drawing more than ever, driving Lyddy mad several times a week as I scribble away in front of the small halo of candlelight in our bedroom.

“Well?” I ask, impatient with his silence, cradling my beer close to me, taking a long sip.

“There’s a confidence developing in the lines,” he pauses holding the sketches up beside each other. “And the way you capture eyes has improved. But this one of the woman in the gown, your later one, be careful about the proportions here, her arms are a bit too long. And her shoulders look a little narrow for her body as well.” Flaws that weren’t noticeable before pull out from the paper, making me grimace at my own ignorance. The aristocratic woman’s body looking awkward and unnatural on the page when before I’d been so proud of it.

“Don’t be discouraged though,” Dante continues. “There’s much here to commend. Your choice of subjects for instance. Both of these women, doing tasks not out of the ordinary for them, and yet there’s something in the expressions on their faces. They look lost in thoughts of something else.” He rolls them deftly, taps both of them on the table to even the rolls and returns them to me.

“Is that it then?” I say.

“You’re only starting out. That’ll give you plenty to work on and I want to see your work again in a couple of months,” he says. “But I’m curious, what do your parents think of this. Of doing these drawings?”

156 “They are unaware of it.”

“But then how do you go about getting your supplies?”

“I have my ways.”

“I won’t pry then.” He holds his glass up to the the smoky light, studying the dark amber of it for a moment, and then he takes a deep draught. He’s so close to me I can hear him slurp it back, watch the pale skin of his throat twitch and ripple as he swallows, his held tilted back. He thunks the glass back on the table, his lips glazed wet.

My glass nearly drained, Dante orders another without asking. The warm feeling deep in the flesh of my face, the ale at work, a numbness in my cheeks. My fingers touch to my lips, crushing them, studying the numbness there too and when I go for another gulp the beer dribbles in my lap, missing my mouth entirely and the back of my hand works to try and flick it away, smears it instead into my skirts.

Dante shifts towards me, his barley beer breath moist on my cheek, “What are they like, your family?”

There’s the truth: my father the cutler, the strict mother, Charles and Anne no longer living with us, and Lydia, Mary, Clara, James and Henry, all younger. Such a dull reality. And I will never be in the same class as any of them, these rich boys with their own studios for painting in.

“I don’t wish to speak of it.” My numb lips clumsy with the words, s’s coming out messy with spit, no longer sharp.

157 “Why ever not?” His leg, warm against mine, hand on my knee, but I don’t push it away, his fingers pressing dimples into the skin there. They want someone to rescue, that’s what I’ve been told, higher class men with artistic temperaments. That’s why they’ve picked me.

“It’s too painful. We’re so poor and my father he . . . ” A sudden eruption of emotion, buying into my own deception, vision hazy and moist. Dante brings both of his hands to encircle mine, a cage of his fingers. My own dwarfed within, for the first time looking so fragile behind the web of his interlocked over me.

“I’m so sorry, I won’t ask any more about it. Look, here’s your ale. Let that be a distraction for you.” The barmaid arriving and leaving in a swirl of stew-stained skirts and the lingering scent of her sour breath after her questioning us if there was anything else we needed, and Dante shaking his head. I take another big mouthful, swish it back and forth in my mouth, pushing it through the thin gaps between my teeth. The lie not such a big one, only half formed and the whole of it more suggestion than anything. Never said what my father does, or doesn’t do, and it’s true that sometimes he uses a switch on us a little harder than we need when he gets angry. And all of us wedged into the tiny rooms of that house. Barely a lie. A bare lie. A lie to bear. Push the guilt away and focus instead on the way his hands are kneading my own. A friction of comfort, his rough skin against my own.

The next slurp of beer, my lips not able to contain it once more, a little dribbles from my mouth, runs down my chin, drips onto my collar bone. Swallow the rest, digging for the kerchief, such an embarrassment, this sloppiness. But he’s noticed. And he’s brushing against my chin with his thumb, wiping the beer away and then sliding down to my collarbone to wipe away the drops there too. Should slap him now, his hands getting too bold, or at least push them

158 away, but my own arms, dangling heavy, such an effort to move them. My muscles anesthetized into willing witnesses of his seduction. His hand staying too long on my collar bone, fingering the hard line of it just beneath the skin.

One of the whores passing by the table, blurry eyes watching me, the rigor mortis smile she’s been carrying around the bar all night. She nods at me, grabs my shoulder and whispers,

“Don’t let him get nothing for free now, girl.” Look at her bony fingers clutching at the meat of me, like she wants to tear a piece off. Dante pondering the depths of his glass of ale not noticing the exchange, his arm a snake sliding over my shoulders constricting. The whore gone now. In her place that familiar burning, tickling, full sensation. So sudden. Not there a moment ago and now urgent.

“Dante!” I mutter. “I need to use the toilette.”

His arm around me, the air a fluid we move through. Out through the back door. The reek far worse out here. A man, arm braced against the back wall, vomit trailing down it from his open mouth: a fetid waterfall. A pretzel of arms and legs, trousers and skirt tangled up off in the shadows the figure on top rocking and grunting against the one below. Dante opening the door of the outhouse for me, a quick check to make sure it’s alright and he guides me inside.

“I’ll just be waiting by the door to keep you safe,” he says and then the door closes behind me shutting off the flow of air. Pull up my skirts, my hands clumsy, but they mustn’t get dirty, the skirts. Otherwise a sign to my parents of my lying. Pull down pantaloons with the hand not encumbered. The smell of the place coating my nostrils, throat spasming in a retch, rebelling at sucking in the foul stench. Then the sweet release. Sound of splashing from far below. How deep is it, if I fell in? The hole a little larger I would tumble, tumble, forever fall

159 “Lizzie!” A banging on the door. Right fist gathers up some shredded newsprint, balls it up, pats it against myself then releases it into the black pit below.

Push open the back door, the ground oozing around below me. The side of the outhouse firm and steady as I lean against it.

“I think we’d better call it a night then,” Dante’s voice from nearby. “You’ve reached your limit and we should get you home.” The arm around me welcome now, my head and neck collapsing onto his shoulder, warm wool of his jacket itching against my sweaty, flushed cheek.

My feet follow the course he steers us through, around the building and down street after street. All sound and sensation focused down to my two feet, the sound of them clicking against the stone, dragging sometimes, the feeling of them sweeping forward stepping down, sweeping forward stepping down. Continuous movement. My eyes rolling down from his shoulder, watching my feet only. Everything else just a mass of hazy, dim colours and noises.

The clicking of our footsteps continuing on around corners and street after street, sometimes my toe catching on an uneven surface, Dante steadying me. Time and distance uncertain things I can no longer judge.

And then we’re standing in front of my house. I could’ve been lead anywhere. The cool air and the walk beginning to revive me although the dizziness still lingers. He rotates me around him till our bodies are crushed together, front to front. His fingers worming their way into my hair, getting caught in the tangles there. Looking up at him, at his dark will-o-wisp of hair, notice for the first time the dark stains under his eyes from lack of sleep, the bags building there. Should pull away, but I don’t. And his thumb and finger catching my chin, pulling me forward and then the hand sliding around the back of my head.

160 Lips on mine. Hungry lips and the taste of his mouth sour with beer, my own uncertain of what to do, clumsy in their passion. The taste should seem foul, but it isn’t somehow. My teeth biting at his lower lip. His thick tongue parting my lips, darting against my own tongue, still heavy with the drunkenness. Muffled moans pushed into the kisses and I can’t tell if they are his or mine or a mixture of us both. His lips missing mine sometimes so that the skin around my mouth becomes sloppy with saliva. And then he pulls away. Not a word. Turns and walks away unsteadily leaving me in front of my house. I turn back towards it, study the front door.

My eyes catch a flicker of movement from one of the upstairs windows. Our bedroom window.

Lyddy’s face darting back down out of sight as I glance up.

161 July 16, 1854

You’re lying in a tilled field, the scent of earth and manure mixed, an overpowering aroma because your face is practically buried in the loam, your arms are already. It’s as though someone has begun burying you and abandoned the job, all of your limbs weighted down.

Far in the distance the sounds of shears working, metal filing against metal. A steady rhythm of cutting. Maybe a sheep is being sheared in a pasture nearby, but then you feel the fingers, digging into your scalp, pulling the hair up, and the cold intrusion of the blade as it slides along your skull snipping, snipping. Your hair being hacked off.

Try and turn your body to see who is doing this, but your arms are still weighted down under the soil, so you crane your head instead, her face visible for a flash and then gone again, but it’s her. Her. Her broad fan of blonde hair, her pale face and sulky lips. Annie.

She sings to you, “Lizzie, Lizzie with your bright red hair. Lizzie, Lizzie, we cut it all off so you can share. Give us your hair. Give us your hair.” The snipping in time to her sing-song voice and then it stops and the flash of the shears above you. She drives them into your stomach.

You lurch forward, fists pressing into the ache with a moan that your lips are too weak to open for. Then fall back into the firm embrace of the high back chair.

“Guggums! Gugg, are you ok?” Dante across the room from you, holding his damn sketchbook still. The swishing of his pencil sketching must have translated into the scissors cutting in your dream.

The cramp comes back again and you clutch your stomach. You’ll go to the toilette, take a few drops, that’ll make it pass. It always does.

162 You rise stiffly, make for the hallway. Dante begins to rise from his chair, “Are you unwell again? Do you want any help?” You wave him away and make it just out the door, before leaning against the wall, sucking air in through your teeth to manage the pain.

In the bathroom you fumble for the bottle, hold it in your palm awhile as soon as you’ve found it. Eyes closed you take a deep breath, then pull the stopper out. Tilt your head back, three drops on the back of the tongue, then gather saliva and swallow.

The cramp rolls through you again. You collapse onto the toilet, then stand up briefly to hitch up your skirts and your underclothes. Grit your teeth, clench muscles, squeeze, hoping for some release. The cramps like a fist squeezing your lower intestines. A slight release, the cramp abating slightly and the sound of it hitting the water telling you how very little it was. Grab a fistful of shredded newsprint, then pour the basin of water on your hands, scrub with the brush and soap. Partway through, grip the wash basin till the blood flees your knuckles. The cramp bearing down again.

More of the laudanum. You pull the stopper out, it falls from your fingers, rattles into the basin and rolls to the bottom. Bring the mouth of the bottle to your mouth, a quick sip. You’ve never sipped straight from the bottle, but it’s faster, easier. Your face scrunching up with the harshness of the alcohol, you retch a bit, forcing yourself to keep it down. Then your fingers paw down the sides of the basin, fingering the stopper, pinching it up, driving it back into the bottle. The bottle back on the shelf. Waiting for you.

When you come back in the sitting room, Dante is waiting, his pencil hovering, unsure of what to draw after you left.

“Better now?” he says.

163 You nod, slump into the chair, your hands folding into each other over your stomach.

You feel bloated, puffed up, as if someone could prick a needle into you and you’d release air.

Your fingers prod your stomach, then stop, it only stirs up the pain.

Close your eyes, feel the laudanum flowing through you, sitting hot in the depths of your stomach, coating over the pain. The late afternoon sun is splashed over your face, even with your eyes closed it tries cut through your eyelids, shining through the skin so that all you see is magenta, speckled with patterns and shapes your mind invents. The patterns shift and spin, whorl faster and faster, the heady rush of the alcohol. Your hands are anonymous paddles, large and fingerless and cold as though they’ve been carved from wood. You can’t see this of course, but can feel it, this transformation. Your head is one of your father’s grindstones, too heavy for your neck, pulling it back to the cushion on the chair, your vertebrae crushing and cracking under its weight.

Across the room he’s breathing, but it seems like he’s so much further away now, as if you’re back in the field and he’s watching from miles away. His breathing at a distance, but the sketching coming from right in front of you. Maybe you’re holding the paper, drawing yourself.

Control over the image for once. But your hands are still paddles and empty and cold. So no, it’s not you. It’s still him. Dante, scratching you out on paper.

You must look half dead, but he’ll draw you with vitality you can’t find anymore.

Sometimes you look through his sketchbooks and the vivacious woman you find there makes you angry. She’s taunting you with health and energy you can’t seem to find anymore. And you’re angry at him for seeing a lie and drawing it every time he sketches you.

164 March 23, 1850

William murmurs things under his breath when he paints. It sounds like he’s having an argument with himself half the time, and I can never tell which side is winning. It makes holding the pose excruciating, because I find his grumblings unbearably comedic, and being frozen in one spot with a sponge in one hand and a bowl in the other makes it all the more absurd.

The corners of my lips twitch with restrained laughter, the fingers curved under the bowl

I’m holding tremble. It’s partly that he’s a man who takes himself so seriously. He can’t possibly know how nutty he sounds, gruffly babbling half-nonsense. The key to finding William bearable is to locate the cracks in his intimidating exterior, the times when he says something foolish, or stumbles over his words. I’ve made him into a clown without him knowing.

But I can’t lose control while modeling, that I take very seriously, so I force all of my focus onto my marking point on the wall. The point is a splash of mauve paint that William slapped there for me during the preliminary sketching period.

I came back to William’s studio two weeks ago and have grudgingly taken Dante’s advice, plying William with compliments here and there. So far the results have been promising.

While a month ago he was either silent or disdainful if I could get him to speak, he is silent for the most part, but on occasion briefly congenial. I’m careful not to overdo it with the compliments though, try to pick moments when it seems sincere to point something out to him.

Yesterday, it was the crimson neck scarf that I’d never seen him wear; today I have a morsel from Dante that I’ve been saving for awhile till William was warmed to me. I’ll use it near the end of our session and if successful it will not only boost his already elephantine ego, but will also trick him into teaching me something. Even if it only gets me close enough to have a look

165 at his painting I’d be happy with that. It’s been driving me mad, hearing his brush licking over the canvas, watching him trowel on paint here and there without knowing what image I’m contributing to.

I’d hoped when we’d started up again, when I got the letter from him announcing that he wished me to come back to his studio, I’d assumed that then he would at last reveal to me what he was working on. The character I’d been posing for would finally be explained to me, but nothing of the sort ever happened. It’s a good thing I’ve managed to find him comedic, because if I took him as seriously as last time I would be quite perturbed by now. I’m sure he thinks all models are stupid, that explaining their character to them would be of no use whatsoever. It’s insulting the way I’m treated.

William holds his hand up from the other side of the canvas, his sign that I can take a break. I drop the sponge into the bowl and put them to the side while I stretch, first bending over to touch my toes, careful not to let my hair touch the gritty floor. Then I swing my arms about to loosen them up and take a few steps so I can get a view of William working where he isn’t blocked out by the canvas. It must be going well for him at the moment because he’s painting with smooth flourishes, not chewing on his paintbrush and grimacing into the canvas like he does when something’s going wrong. This might be an opportune moment to use what Dante has told me, but I wait until his painting has slowed down so as not to interrupt him.

“William,” I say, “When I saw Gabriel at the pub the other night he said he had some exciting news, that you’d discovered a new method.” I’ve conceded to calling Dante Gabriel around the others because they pretend not to recognize him by his new name and make a big routine about the whole thing which has become tiresome to me.

166 “Hmm,” William responds, his brush at least pulling from the canvas even if he can’t be bothered to look at me.

“He told me he believed it to be a major breakthrough in the technique of the

Brotherhood.” I exaggerate how important Dante made William’s new technique sound, enticing him to bite. “He wouldn’t explain it to me, suggested I ask you instead.”

“Alright then, come here. I’ll explain it to you quickly and then we’d best get back to work.” He’s actually looked up from his canvas and is waiting for me, sets down his brush and slides his hands underneath the back of his stool and leans back. For the first time I’m in close proximity to where he works. The extra brushes strewn across a palette are the high quality ones.

I’ve gone into a supply shop and eyed their wares and I recognize them as being some of the more costly ones. Their bristles have been carelessly left caked in dry paint. Another thing which irks me about William, his slovenly attitude.

“I’ve called it the wet white ground method,” William tells me. “Come around beside me here and I’ll explain each step to you.”

It’s my first time getting a glimpse of the painting. I’m struck at first by how exposed the men are in the painting. William has only painted in one of them, a man on the right whose face is turned from the viewer. The half-naked men seem to act as a sort of border to the grouping of four in the middle of which I am a part of. At last I get a sense of who my character is. An old woman is holding up a priest in the midst of a collapse and I and another young woman are assisting her in caring for him.

167 William notices me studying the painting, “It’s to be called A Converted British Family

Sheltering a Christian Missionary from the Persecution of the Druids.” Titles aren’t his strong suit it seems.

“Now the method I’m going to teach you, it came about because I wanted to find a way to make the colours richer and brighter. Like jewels almost. The key is to treat the entirety of the canvas with a ground chosen specifically for its brightness. You can improve upon it with some fresh white if necessary.” William takes note of the confused expression on my face and explains further, “A ground is made up of a blend of chalk, white lead and linseed oil. It’s essential. You let that set up till it’s nice and hard. Maybe give it a feel on a spot I haven’t worked on.” I touch the pad of my finger to spot in the bottom right corner, it’s solid and smooth.

“Once the ground has set-up,” William continues, “You can sketch the outline of the painting over it as you see I’ve done.” I study my character in the painting more closely. Surely my hands aren’t that large! The proportion of my body is strange, my exposed left arm far more muscular than my own, and then the hands again, they look like the hands of a man. The bodies of the others, whether they’ve been painted in, or not, look lifelike with graceful proportions, but me he’s painted as some odd, stumpy looking figure, everything a wee bit off.

“Now this next part,” William says, “is what’s most important, and is what’s original here.” I take my mind off the awkward way in which I’ve been depicted to listen. “This morning, before you arrived, I added a coat of white. You want to be sure that all the superfluous oil from the white has been extracted by means of absorbent paper, and be sure to add a drop of varnish to it. You spread this second coat thin enough that your sketches still show through, and

168 you use one of these palette-knives for that task. You can also use a brush though if need be.

While this layer is still wet I’m painting on it with light sable brushes. It’s a very delicate procedure, you press too hard when stroking the paint on then you risk working up the ground beneath. And you have to be extra careful, especially with fine details because using this technique means you can’t retouch the painting, otherwise the colour wouldn’t be quite as luminous.”

No retouching. Not a method that can be of any use to me at the moment, even if I were to be painting, but it’s a sign of things to come. If I can pry William open like this, cantankerous clam that he is, then the others will offer me plenty in the way of instruction. I heap praise on the genius of William’s wet white ground method, return to the task of being his model, pretending, at least for the moment, that that’s all I desire to be.

169 March 27, 1850

I’ve grown used to the sounds of William’s studio, the muffled shouts and banging from the boys on the floor below, but this time there is a different noise. I stop halfway up the stairs, not sure of what I’ve heard, steady my breath, listening. There it is. Laughter! But it’s not

William, it’s a woman’s laugh. A rich laugh that rises with each note of exhalation. The men’s laughter is only a chorus behind, it half drowns them out.

Puzzled, I climb the stairs. Perhaps I’m modeling with someone else today? But that makes no sense. From what I’ve heard, William prefers to have his models pose by themselves.

It makes sense, he only paints one figure at a time and the only other women in the painting he’s finished already.

When I reach the top of the stairs all that’s visible is her back swathed in copper silk that’s riddled with picks and loose threads. Even from here it’s obvious she’s shorter than me.

She wears her blonde hair loose and stands in the center of the group. She’s laughing again, her head tilted back, exposing a pale, delicate neck. Innocent prey offering herself over to the hunters. She turns slightly, her mouth open in joy, eyes watery from laughing hard. She holds her hand to her breast, trying to contain herself. The men wheeze, clutch at the stitches in their sides. Dante steadies himself by resting his hand briefly on her shoulder.

I knock on the door I’ve just opened. William, who’s bent over, hands on his knees trying to recover, straightens up, startled.

“Oh Lizzie! You’re early! But this is perfect, you haven’t met Annie yet.”

Annie doesn’t wait for the men to introduce us, but sweeps across the floor to me, “Ah so you’re Lizzie are you? Look at that hair! How unusual! But then they do like unusual things

170 here don’t they?” She grins at her own perceived joke. Her lips are full and their shape makes it look as though she’s always sulking to get her way. Her proportions are perfect, if there’s one thing I’ve learned from Dante it’s the qualities of a well-balanced body. Her neck isn’t too long and her arms are fleshy and curve up into her shoulders. Everything about her is fuller, less angular than I am. She is like one of them, the way she comes and speaks so directly to me, as if we’re friends already. Women don’t speak to each other this way.

As she draws closer it’s an effort not to recoil. She has a foul smell to her, not just of stale sweat, but of layers and layers of it building up on the skin, souring there. Her hair a muddy brown at the roots and stringy with grease. One can only imagine how many weeks it’s been since she last bathed.

“So where did they find you then?” she says, crossing her arms. I study the fingernails of her hands: chewed ragged with a line of filth under them.

“I was a milliner’s assistant. Still am actually. Just fewer hours.”

She pouts her lips and sucks in air through them, “Wooh, look at you then.”

“And you?” It’s only polite to ask even though I know too well from the stories how exactly Annie earns her living.

“Barmaid,” she says. “I was throwing pints down the tables when I caught William’s eye.

Of course the dress I’m wearing now, much more modest you know. I gave him an eyeful that night.” She winks at me, then there’s the bulge of her tongue beneath her lips, working its way up along her top teeth, no doubt worrying at some piece of gristle caught there. Utterly repulsive. And yet beneath all of it, the grime, the uncouth behavior, there’s a sly sort of beauty.

Her eyes have that round, wide innocence to them, but I sense some cunning beneath. And in

171 their paintings of her you won’t have to smell her of course. And they can add a glimmer to her hair that one can’t find at the moment.

She moves back to the group of men, and I trail behind. William slips his arm around her waist as she draws near. She mimes a kiss near his cheek. He bites his lip in embarrassment as the other men laugh again.

I draw near Dante. “So,” he says, “Now that you’ve met, what do you think? Shall you become fast friends?”

Good lord what a question. If only it were a joke, but there’s sincerity in his eyes and his voice, so I mouth back the answer they want from me, “Oh yes, of course! I imagine we’ll become dear friends.”

“Alright you meddlesome lot, out of studio and off to the pub. I want to get a few more hours in yet today,” William says, his arms wrapping around Johnny and Dante’s shoulders, guiding them out. Annie twists her lips up into a flirtatious little smile as she walks by him to join Johnny and Dante, who are at the door now. William grabs her by the arm and her smile grows larger and crooked. “I’ll see you there later as well won’t I?” he asks her.

“I thought I was part of the ‘meddlesome lot’ you referred to before.” Annie says, not pulling away from his hand gripping her forearm.

“Of course not my dear,” William says, and then in a quieter voice so that the others can’t hear, “If either of us is going to be meddling, it’ll be me, meddling with you.”

My back is to the two of them, I’m gathering up my costume to change, forgotten by both of them. When I turn my head to the side to watch, I see her suck in her lower lip, her wide eyes narrowing. She chuckles, but says nothing in return, turns and walks towards Johnny and Dante

172 who have been waiting for her by the door. Dante puts his arm through hers and they disappear down the flight of stairs.

173 January 11, 1852

Lydia refused to help me with my corset this morning. She must have eavesdropped on my conversation with Mama and decided she has principles, although she can’t seem to see the irony of judging someone based on spying and prying.

Maybe it was just that it was early in the morning, or perhaps she’s developed some sense of melodrama but she said, “I won’t help dress a ruined woman off to further spoil her reputation.”

“Oh don’t be absurd,” I said. “Come on!” But she remained seated on the bed. Typical that she’d wait until after I’d helped her to announce me as some kind of harlot.

“You know perfectly well I’m no ruined woman,” I said.

“Do I? You come home awfully late in the evenings more often than not.”

“The only thing I’m guilty of is bringing home more at the end of each month than you, and in a line of work which you would be woefully inept at.”

Lydia’s stockinged feet slapped across the floor and she slammed the door as hard as she dared on the way out.

Practically any day in January is inadvisable for spending much time outdoors. I’m not sure why I thought walking to Johnny’s was such a grand idea. I left just after breakfast because the journey will take me several hours, and now, only a half-hour in and I’m regretting it. The ridges of my cheeks prickle with the winter air, I pluck at the scarf encircling my neck, pull it up higher around my cheeks and nearly numb ears.

174 Last night I’d mentioned to Mama when the others were still at work that I’d be modeling for Millais now. Lydia had come earlier than I expected, I found her later in our room, but clearly she’d been listening in the stairwell.

Mama didn’t express any outward disapproval. How could she when I was bringing home a far greater salary than I’d ever earned at Mrs. Tozer’s? And with our dear brother

Charlie gone now they’re more desperate than ever for my wages. She must have thought the pattern that had begun with my employment by Walter would continue. That I was somehow a

“lady model,” above the other common women of questionable morals. That my employment with any artist would always begin with a calling card and an appointment for a proper interview.

That every studio would have a chaperone.

“What about that Mr. Rossetti chap? I thought he went about gaining your employment the proper way,” Mama said. My lies were a comfort to her at the very least.

“He’s interested in me as a model yes, but he hasn’t found the right subject yet which I would pose for. And at any rate Mr. Millais is his friend, as was Mr. Hunt, and all of them seem quite close with the Deverells who you must admit are a very honorable family.”

“Still, it seems unusual they can’t be bothered to go about it the proper way like that young Mr. Deverell did. Has he asked you to sit for him once more? I’d rather hoped you’d work for him again.”

“No, Mama. He hasn’t mentioned any work yet.” It’s highly unlikely he will too, what with the reviews he received for Twelfth Night.

175 Mama let the subject drop and said no more about it when I left for Johnny’s studio this morning, but when I return tonight it’s almost a certainty that Papa will be calling me into his workshop again for some lecture coated in awkward metaphors.

What Mama is really disappointed about is not that Walter is no longer interested in me as a model, but that I have no chance of being courted by him if I’m not in his presence.

Of course Mama had to bring up Walter. A family like his would’ve never approved of his marrying me, but that’s not what stung, it was the response to my work with him. One critic said my face was altogether too common. The critics, nosing in as if privy to my own doubts about my competence as a model. Dante assured me it was just Walter’s lack of skill, that the woman on the canvas wasn’t me, but merely had a hint of my features.

My eyelashes are coated in frost and my hands are pulled back into my sleeves by the time I arrive at Johnny’s studio. It has a similar quality about it to William’s: a barren room carved out of a building used for other purposes. Unlike William he is surrounded by small apartments filled with families instead of classrooms crammed school boys and unlike William he’s actually put some effort into the appearance of the place. The wood floor has been swept clean. An old threadbare carpet adds some charm and warmth to the center of the room, but squatting disconcertingly over it is a bathtub. Johnny hadn’t mentioned what piece he wanted me to model for and so the tub is a riddle. A scene involving water I suppose.

The windows on the wall to the right of me are small, but wiped clean and some curtains of a plaid material have been tacked over them. They add a homey touch to the place but I can’t help but wonder if his mother might be behind it.

176 Johnny is stooped over in a corner of the room, unpacking an assortment of candles. He looks over his shoulder when he hears me enter. “Ah! The Sid” He approaches me, but then stands a pace or two back, looking me over.

“Just as I thought,” he says. “Mad’s a damned fool.”

“Sorry Johnny?”

“Silly man said I ought to pick someone else for the painting. After the reviews for

Twelfth Night he said maybe we ought to forget about you altogether. But it’s clearly dear Walter and his lack of talent. I love that boy, but he makes a muddle of people sometimes.”

Johnny catches sight of the look on my face, my lips parted, aghast.

“Oh Jesus!” he says. “I shouldn’t have said any of that!” He buries a hand in his frizzy mop of hair, sinking it in up to the knuckles, begins massaging his scalp. He always does this when he’s anxious. “Look, it’s as I said anyways, it’s Walter’s fault not yours. Everyone knows it but Mad and he’s clearly mistaken. Dante’s done some marvelous studies of you, I’ve seen them.

And it’s common knowledge by now how highly praised I’ve been by the Academy. Well, when they weren’t peeved at me joining with the Brotherhood of course. But you’re in good hands is what I’m trying to say. Just wait for the reviews of the painting we’ll do together. They’ll marvel over you. My talent will ensure that.” The others of the Brotherhood have begun grumbling about Johnny when he’s not around. Not hard to see why.

Not much heat is emanating from his small range, so Johnny grabs the cast iron poker beside it and gives the coals a jab. “Now, I want to tell you what I had in mind while you warm up. Have you heard of the character Ophelia before?”

“She’s a character in a play of Shakespeare’s isn’t she?”

177 “Yes. She’s the doomed lover of Hamlet. You’ve never read or seen the play?”

“No, I’ve no experience with the play.”

“Well she wants to marry Hamlet, see? Only he goes mad and paranoid after the murder of his father and – well, without explaining the whole plot to you, Ophelia is rejected by Hamlet.

Here was the man she hoped to marry and he has nothing but hatred for her now.” He jabs at a log clumsily, making it collapse against the side of the range. His adjustments unfruitful at the moment. He sighs, sets down the poker and begins working his hand through his hair again, fluffing it.

“Sounds a rather gloomy subject.”

“Yes, I suppose it is. But what’s beautiful about it is the way she dies.” He’s forgotten entirely about the range now, walks over to his worktable and begins flipping through his sketchbook.

“She does herself in? You’re not doing much to make it sound any cheerier!”

“She wades into a river with a bouquet of flowers and drowns herself.”

I turn from where I’m crouching at the range to look back at the bathtub.

“I think I’m beginning to piece it together now.”

Johnny sees where I’m looking, “Yes, I’d like you to pose for Opehlia, but I want the moment when they find you in the river, and so yes I’d like to float you in the tub in order to get the right effects of the water on your dress and hair.”

I walk up to the tub, my fingers ringing the edge of it, tips dangling in the tepid water. In all honesty I can’t blame Johnny for getting a bit egotistical. It’s clear he’s superior to the others.

The people in his paintings are on the verge of breathing. You’d swear that if you reached out

178 and touched the canvas that instead of a hard crust of paint you’d feel warm skin with every figure he’s painted. And I’d be the soul focus of the piece. No longer a background character.

I couldn’t wait to be rid of William when I first began modeling for him, but now all he speaks about is Annie.

“She’s effortless,” William told Dante at the pub a few nights ago, “You show her the pose once and it’s as if her body has always known it. She never forgets, I never have to make any adjustments. And when I paint her it’s as though something divine occurs; I become lost in the experience of painting her. She elevates my spirit of expression.” Dante made some witty remark about how she might elevate more than just his spirit and William threw a fit and went outside to take the air and calm himself.

Her name comes up more and more in their conversations, and not in a demeaning way as it might do with the other models. After the way Twelfth Night was torn to shreds by the critics my position feels precarious.

Johnny will reinvigorate their enthusiasm towards me. What better muse for them than a tragically drowned woman. He’d mentioned a dress, flowers, my hair a weightless veil flowing around my face in the bathwater. I’ll earn my reputation back again with the brotherhood.

“You haven’t said no yet,” Johnny says.

“I’d be honoured to pose for it!”

“Splendid! Now I’ve already found just the thing for the costume, hold on a moment.”

He goes to fetch something off a line of hooks weighed down with props and folds of fabric. A jumbled collection of costumes he’s managed to piece together.

179 Johnny holds the dress out and I try not to cringe. Yes, there’s a beauty to it, the rich embroidery running down the front, the pearls stitched into the design, but the fabric is grey with age and oily to the touch. I think of its greasiness soon to be pressing against my bare skin.

There’s the odor of it too, musty with stale sweat and a touch of cheap violet perfume. The woman must have drenched herself with it for it to still be lingering on the fabric like that.

“Beautiful, isn’t it?” he says, “It’s antique, a wedding dress I came upon.” I nod, not wanting to ask him where exactly he found it. I wouldn’t put it past him, or any of the others to salvage something from a back alley and layer romance over it.

“It’s perfect for Ophelia, yes? Just look at the embroidery and the pearls. Stunning piece of work.” His fingers follow the curlicues of embroidery and he becomes lost in tracing the pattern for a moment, then stops abruptly and straightens.

“But first these need to be put under the tub and lit.” He drags the box he’d been about to unpack earlier and begins placing candles under the tub.

“The candles were a suggestion of my mother’s,” he explains, “I was terribly afraid that you would catch cold, but it interrupts the flow if we have to add hot water continually. Mama is rather brilliant that way, always with little suggestions here and there for me about how I might operate my studio more smoothly. Can’t see how I’d manage without her and I think the candles will definitely do the trick. Really, it might be one of the more comfortable poses you’ve done thus far, floating there peacefully.”

Clearly he hasn’t thought of how this dress will reek, soaking in tepid bath water for an hour. And he has no idea how heavy it will be. Neither do I really, never having had the inclination to float about in our tub fully dressed.

180 “Don’t be too peaceful about it though,” he tells me, “Remember she died a broken, tragic woman.” He considers the tub a moment longer, “We’ll have flowers later, when we get to the painting itself, but at the moment I just can’t afford them.”

“Of course,” I reply. I think of the expense of the thin bundle of scarlet carnations I placed at the head of my brother’s fresh grave the month before. I haven’t told Walter or even

Johnny yet. I want to know my place here is earned, not driven by their pity, by the fact that the money is needed now more than ever. And with Annie overshadowing me at the moment they might even think of it as an attempt to grab at their heartstrings. I’ve only told Dante about

Charlie: the fever, the sudden end, his empty eyes locked on the ceiling. I stood beside the bed, oddly fascinated by that stare, trying to sort out when the change had happened. When the gaze had shifted from meaningful to blank.

I slip behind the screen of the changing room with the dress, gather a long breath into my chest, and make that day fresh again. This is my freedom, to pull out the emotions a proper woman slides away into those secret compartments of the self. Maybe that’s why other women glare and judge when they see me at the table with Dante and the others. A model isn’t a proper woman. She isn’t proper because she’s free.

I step out from behind the screen and stand before the tub. Meditate on it. Pull away the porcelain of it, freeing the water. It’s no longer a constrained vessel, but the body of a river to submerge in. The warmth of the water crawls up my ankles on entering and the dress begins to hang heavily already.

Johnny lowers me into the tub, his fingers encircling my wrists.

181 May 9, 1856

! You wanted to draw the scene where Lord Gregory found her the next morning, the Lass of Lochryan. Her hair the beacon, a golden tangle in the midst of the angry, green waves of the sea. Dante thought it morbid that you’d want to paint such a scene. He prefers the earlier section of the tale, the Lass of Lochryan, babe in one arm, fist pounding the door of Lord

Gregory’s castle. Gregory hidden away in his keep surrounded by the ocean, faeiries having magicked him away from his true love, and as she calls out to them they imitate his voice. They ask for her to recall tokens of love exchanged between her and Gregory to prove her love. But however many memories of their courtship she recounts it is never enough, the door never opens.

Dante is drawn to stories such as these: women whose love is true, but suffer nonetheless. The men never at fault, but silenced by magic, unable to act due to some spell or other.

You drew the scene he asked for, woman pounding at the door, babe in arm as gale winds splinter the ocean into fang waves, the tide rising at her ankles. She’d had a family that loved her, so had you. Had told her they’d care for her and her son, but fool that she was she chose to be true to her love instead. She wanted to follow after the lord who’d abandoned her, vanished, unable to hear her through the murmurs of the sirens, their fingers stopping his ears.

He’d written to you in the new year. He’d mentioned her offhand in the letter, one of the guests in the gathering of all of them at the Madox-Brown’s home. That was the last letter. He’d written often before, telling you of his visits, and then her name in that last letter, and then no more letters followed. You, sequestered off in France. The holiday you’d thought would work to your advantage now acting against you. Annie, simpering at his side, nibbling on the ends of her pale hair. Hair the same hue as that of the Lass of Lochryan.

182 The illustration wants to be a water colour like Clerk Sanders had. But it’s the scene you’d first wanted to paint that is coming out instead. An endless ocean, your brush dabbing at water, then pigment, smoothing waves over the paper. The sound of them in the sound of the brush bristles rasping against the paper. The sound a constant at Hastings. On the beach, your eyes closed, a voice in that tide approaching. Not a whisper, but on the same register. A voice strangled with phlegm forcing its way out of tattered, flooded lungs. A dare between the ocean and you. How long can you sit there before it breathes you in?

When it comes time to paint the billow of pale hair the pigments turn against you. She should be the Lass of Lochryan, Annie, babe born out of wedlock torn from her arms by the storm. A love child she might have had with William or Dante, its skull crushed between the press of ocean and a bulging belly of shore rock. The lass swallowing brine and her own hair till her tongue lolls limp, swollen and blue.

You want revenge on her through the paint and the brush, but the pigment prevents you.

Every fleck from the brush touching the paper and the hair comes out copper no matter how you mix the powder for colour.

The green bottle reassuringly perched on the righthand corner of your desk. You bring it to your lips, let a ribbon of it snake down your tongue. Stand unsteadily, legs carrying you to the curved embrace of your basket chair where you’ll rest, gather your strength. Dreams of the ocean rocking you. Salt water clouding your lungs, rising up through the tissue.

183 July 9, 1852

“You must have a look at this tree!” This is Dante’s greeting to me, no hello, nor inquiries about my journey, just wild exclamations about a tree before I’m even half way through the gate. Surely it’s not some silly tree that’s energized him this way, but the simple fact of being away from the family home. I’ve yet to meet the other Rossettis, but by his descriptions I’d wither there too, all of them so sternly religious, even the sister, who, being a poet of her generation you would think might choose to live more freely than she does. Dante is sure she’ll die a spinster.

I trail behind him across the lawn of his summer lodgings, known as the Hermitage, luggage in hand. He’s taking care of it for a Mr. Edward Bateman, who’s off visiting a cousin.

Ed, Dante keeps telling me I should call the man, but I won’t even be meeting him so I don’t see why it matters if I keep a little formal. The tree is a rather fine one, and as we stand below it it nearly obscures the sky, its gnarled shoulders and twisted arms above us, the green slashes of leaves we can’t hope to even reach from down here.

“It has a name!” gasps Dante, his energy so frenetic I have to keep myself from laughing.

It’s sweet to see him like this, so charged, but at the same time it’s only a tree, and he can get carried away with his enthusiasms till he’s more clown than artist. But laughing is out of the question because he’s at his most vulnerable at these moments too, easily made sulky. “Aren’t you going to ask for its name?”

“Will I have to call it Ed as well?” I ask, unable to help myself.

But his enthusiasm is so buoyant that he lets out a bark of laughter, nudges his shoulder with mine. “Clever girl, clever girl! No, it’s called Nelson’s Tree.”

184 “I’m very happy that he has his own tree, this Nelson, whoever he is.”

“He’s only the most important Nelson . . .” He holds back from ending the sentence, hoping I will, but I’m not on his thought path, standing off to the side instead, perhaps behind a shrub of some sort that is complete obscuring any meaning I might get.

“The admiral! Nelson the famous admiral for goodness sake!”

“Ah I see.” War and all its heroes have never interested me much despite my brothers’ tastes for it and their constant reenactments back in our childhood, lobbing stones at each other for cannonballs.

“He climbed it as a child, or so they say.” Dante scuffs the bark of it with the heel of his palm in admiration, probably imagining it to be the spot where a boy admiral scrambled up in his ascent, slightly back from the tree, I have more of the perspective of the mother. The mother who anxiously watched the first few times he made the climb, and after, when he grew up and soaked himself into the blood and strategy of war, was most likely wishing he’d come back and climb the damned tree instead.

Dante turns from the tree, notices at last the cluster of luggage around my feet. “So you did it then? Managed to get away from them for the entire weekend?” he asks.

I nod. Their agreement was careless in a way, as if they couldn’t be bothered to get all the details from me to ensure it was the truth. I can’t help but think I ought to feel more about this moment, standing here with my bags nosing against my boots. There should be stomach- clenching guilt, a modest tremble to my fingers at the prospect of losing my honor, but I breathe easily, my fingers dangle loosely. I’ve never felt so present in a moment until now, as if in this instant, in this country cottage I am discovering the flesh I’ve resided in all these years.

185 Dante gathers up my luggage, one of those unexpected gentlemanly gestures that flares up in him from time to time. We head towards the cottage, a grand three-story stone house with shutters painted an eccentric orange. To the side is a smaller building almost swallowed up by tendrils of ivy licking up over its walls and up onto its thatched roof. The entire property is at a slight upward slope and Dante, little used to any labour but the grinding and mixing of his pigments and the stretching of canvases, is already breathing heavily from the gentle incline.

I drift away from him towards one of the many gardens scattered amongst the grounds, let my fingers stroke the stalks of ferns growing along the edge, admire the towers of delphinium blooms buzzing with the fuzzy pollen-dusted bodies of bees. It’s still early in the morning and the sun has just begun to warm my skin. I stretch my fingers out into the honey hued light breaking through the apple orchard trees around us. The silence of the place overwhelms at first, no rumble of chatter, or cries of babies to be heard however faint from beyond the hedges that border this vast property.

Dante calls from the front steps of the cottage, and I come running, letting my skirts slide through the dew-damp grass, my shoes already soaking with it. He shows me to my room first, a double bed covered in a quilt of spring colors. The luxury of having a bed all to myself! I stretch out across it, spreading my arms and legs wide with a sigh. All this space for one body.

Water stains bloom along the ceiling like a pale yellow watercolour.

“Teach me how to use watercolour paints won’t you?” I ask him, notice only now that he’s never seen me on a bed before, my hair fanning out from my head, my body prostrate before him. I lie that way for awhile, meeting his eyes, smiling, a kind of dare between us, but he doesn’t leave the doorway, only watches.

186 “Of course,” he replies. “I have my paints here and I’d be happy to teach you how to use them. But we’ll begin with some sketching first, after breakfast of course.”

Since the staff has been sent away on a break while Mr. Bateman is away, Dante sets me up making porridge while he vanishes back outside. The kitchen is such a contrast to Mama’s; it glows with light from three windows and wraps me in a wide embrace of counters and cupboards. Dante had to find everything for me because of the size of it, the number of cooking implements on hand overwhelming.

I set the water boiling with the oats in a large pot and stand in front of it, arms crossed, sure that I’ll wreck it somehow. My sisters were always better at the cooking part of things. So typical that he’d think I’d have the skills for this, as if every middle-class girl can be set to work making meals.

I fully intend on being clear with him when he returns that I have no intention of playing maid, but when he comes back I’m distracted with laughing at him. He’s picked apples, a dozen or so, and in order to get them all back to the kitchen at once he’s untucked the front of his shirt to use as a basket. With teeth gritted, half in grimace, half in grin, he comes waddling under their weight and heaves his “basket” up onto the counter. Apples roll wildly, threatening to drop off the counter. I rush over, spreading my arms wide beside him to contain them all, leaning across the counter and he lifts his shirt a little higher to shake the last of them free. My left cheek pressed into the cool roundness of the apples I see the bare skin of his navel exposed as he does this, a lean stomach covered with a fine swath of dark hair, just a quick glimpse of this part of him I’ve never seen before and then he’s tucking his shirt back in, brushing bits of leaves and stem off of himself.

187 “I thought perhaps you could slice a few into the porridge for us, and some of the others

I’ll use to set up a still life for you to sketch after we’ve finished eating.” He holds up one of the apples, “Just look at the lovely mottled colour of the skin. It will be the perfect challenge for you this morning.” He takes his time selecting three of the best apples and then leaves me to slice a couple of them into the porridge.

I trace the paring knife in circles around the apple, trying to peel it, but half the time cutting in too deep and removing chunks of apple. I slice the naked apples in half, core them, leaving jagged edges at the centre. Then I attempt to slice the apples into smaller bits and am left with a pile of uneven chunks. At least I know they’ll cook into a sweet softness with the porridge, my clumsiness at making the meal not obvious at all to Dante, but when I lift the lid to the pot what’s beneath doesn’t look in the least bit appetizing. Steam rises from a bubbling mess of beige goo. I throw the apples in, give the mixture a quick stir and close the lid, hoping for the best.

Dante finds me sometime later frowning over the pot, trying to decide if I dare look in again or not. “Shouldn’t it be done by now?” he asks, his presence close behind me.

Anxiety and arousal fight for dominance in my head as he reaches around me and lifts the lid from the pot. A tendril of smoke oozes out, the distinct smell of something burning.

“Oh God!” I say, peering down into the pot with him. The center of the oatmeal looks much the same, but the outside has congealed into a hard crust that’s blackened on the outer edges. We scoop what’s salvageable from the center and sit gumming it dejectedly. I watch

Dante spoon porridge into his mouth, the spoon slipping back out from between his lips, licked completely clean, his tongue caressing the silver curve of it.

188 “Well,” he says, rising from the table at last. “Shall we get to it then?” He leads me back out of the cottage and to the hut beside it. The door grinding and groaning as we open it, I see he’s set the apples out for me, three of them arranged on a table with the morning light sending long, black shadows out in front of them. He hands me a pad of paper and a pencil and sits, watching me work.

For a long while I sit studying the apples, noting the way the light bounces off their smooth skins, trying to push away the knowledge of his eyes on me, but the drawing must begin some time. My fingers fumble to grasp the pencil, make the lightest of lines begin their tentative course to shape the edge of the table and then the same for the apples. If only there was an eraser, but Dante didn’t set one out for me. Pressing a little harder now I begin darkening the line around the edge of the table, adding texture bit by bit to the surface.

“You’re too careful,” Dante says, coming over to crouch beside me. “Every time I’ve watched you sketch you’re so tentative about the whole thing. Where’s the passion? When do you ever lose yourself to the wild abandon of the work?”

“But I might make a mistake. I only want to be careful so as not to get anything wrong.”

“Make mistakes! Mistakes are glorious! Be sloppier about your sketching, not every exercise you do is going to end up a masterpiece.” Dante covers my sketching hand in his own, my hand a puppet’s beneath his, holding the pencil while he moves me. His sketching is more desperate, wild arcs for the apples, impassioned strokes that my hand is forced to keep up with.

His hand works mine furiously, pushing away its halting movement, giving it a new rhythm.

“You see?” he says. “Put some energy into the work, otherwise it comes out looking dead.” The result seems like such a messy scrawl, but there is something there far more

189 compelling than any of the sketches I’ve ever done. The drawing is only there for a moment before he rips off the sheet of paper, crumples it and tosses it in the corner. Such wasteful decadence; he could’ve used the back of the sheet still.

“Now you try,” he says, stepping back. The boning from my corset digs painfully into my shoulder blades, an irritating burn. If only my fingers could dig underneath the layers of fabric, rub between the corset and my chemise. But my hand is wrapped around the pencil instead, locking up and not wanting to perform for him. This isn’t how I draw, it’s his style and I don’t know how to approach it. How he can sit before a subject and not even take a moment to plan it out, but just find his way into it with a frenzied precision.

“No fear, no thinking,” he says, moving closer, his fingers kneading into my shoulders, pulses of pleasure at certain spots where the points of his fingers dig into the fibers of my muscles.

Pencil to paper again and I let the lines out, long and loose and scribbly, my hand wavering. The apple comes out a blobby, sloppy form, squashed on one side, with no resemblance to its living self on the table not a foot before me. Dante’s hand darts from behind me, snatches at the paper, crumples it.

“Again.”

My body all resistance, the pencil hard to grip now, hot and moist.

“Breathe,” he says.

A little intake of air half-ballooning my lungs. I wipe the pencil on my skirts, then wipe my hands.

190 “No, a deeper breath.” Another lungful of air stale with dust. “Not deep enough. You need to take a great, big, deep breath.” The audible sound of me sucking it in. More and more.

But the corset holds my chest, my lungs. The corset only allows the shallow, mincing breaths a proper lady is supposed to take. Proper women don’t gasp in the air, getting greedy for more than they need, getting giddy on an overdose of oxygen.

The feeling of the corset cinched around my hips. Holding me back. I run my hands down my sides. Its presence has been bothering me more and more since I began modeling. The corset always been there, since I was old enough to wear it and Mama tied it up for the first time.

I never questioned whether or not I enjoyed wearing it, simply slipped it off before bed, or whenever I had to wear costumes for modeling. Now it becomes more uncomfortable than is bearable, till I can think of nothing else. My fingernails dig into the layers beneath, trying to loosen the way it strangles my breath.

“Hold on,” I tell Dante. “Wait for me, I think I have a solution for this.” And I dash out the door past the look of confusion on his face, his lips sucked thin with puzzlement.

In my room I shed my dress and then petticoats. My fingers work to free the knots tied so tightly by Lydia only this morning. Without the laces free and loose the buttons on the front will be impossible to undo. Doing the job on my own a ridiculous impossibility with no way for me to see what I’m doing. Fingers tugging and tugging but the knot pulls tighter instead of collapsing loose. I let my arms drop to my sides. They ache after being pinned back in such an awkward fashion, the muscle unfamiliar to the labour. I shake out the strain in both arms then try again, fatigue setting in earlier this time. With the struggle and my dashing up to my room, and the building warmth from the sun ripening into afternoon in the window, my body has the sticky

191 itch of too much sweat. The sensation inescapable. The corset feels heavier, damp and clinging to my ribs. I give one more tug at it with an angry growl.

The knife. Its hard silver razoring through the flesh of the apple. The precision and sharpness of it. The kind of knife my father would be proud to forge and sharpen.

My feet tumble one after another down the stairs towards the kitchen. The knife there on the counter where I left it. I wield it in my right hand and crane it back over my shoulder, slipping the blade flat between the thin fabric of my chemise and this tough second-skin that constricts against me. I turn the blade so the sharp edge strains against the fabric. Turn and turn it until the satisfying grinding sound of fibers unzipping before the blade. I work the blade lower, see-sawing it through the remainder of the corset till the last inch which I tear apart with my hands. The corset drops to the ground and I’m left standing there in pantaloons and my chemise, staring down at the crumpled form of the corset on the ground, the jagged line of its mutilation.

I close my eyes, my lips part, pulling air in through both my nose and mouth, as much air as I can bear to hold in. The feeling of my ribs expanding to their fullest. Five breaths in and out, the dizzy rush of an abundance of oxygen. My back slumps loosely without the rigid support, relaxed in its hunch. The freedom of poor posture.

I bend over to pick up the corset, an act that would have been nearly impossible back when I still wore it. Not straightening back up right away, I let myself hang there, fingers just about able to touch my toes. The gleeful ability to look at the world upside down like this. A memory surfacing of when I was a little girl doing cartwheels across the back lawn, handstands,

192 before my first corset went on at eleven. My first corset was looser, not so confining as the present day one, but it was the beginning of my body being shaped against its will.

A breeze trickles in from an open window, tickling my chemise against my bare skin.

The first time the absurdity becomes apparent: my near nakedness in the middle of this kitchen.

I clutch the remains of the corset up off the floor, ball it up in my hands, the wire frame of it resisting this crumpling, pushing back as though I’m trying to crush the ribcage of a small dog.

Before I head upstairs I tear my stockings off too, the garters snagging on my skin as I pull them down. These join the crumpled mass of fabric in my hands. The first time my feet have been bare outside my own bedroom.

Back in my room I retie my petticoats. Even with the release from the constraints of the corset there’s no need to let my modesty drop away completely. I let my dress fall back down over my head, redo the fastenings. Luckily it’s a hand me down from Anna, one that’s always been a little loose for me and now my freed flesh, no longer held back, fills in the curves.

193 August 26, 1852

! There’s a long ribbon of haze that divides the ocean from the sky. It’s fitting, this haze.

A distinct line between water and sky would be more comforting. The two of them firmly divided. The haze suggests a kind of division, but at its heart I can’t make out where the water stops and the sky begins.

The sun so piercing now that I have to squint to study the haze hovering between air and sea. The squinting, the sharp flecks of light bouncing off the waves, both of them prodding a headache on, an achey mass more to the left side of my brain than the right, like a heavy stone.

It’s a trick, them sending me to a place beside the ocean, far from the city. A holiday they said it would be, my parents. And the ocean suggests freedom, the view of it unfettered by the choking smog and buildings back in London. But this place is dead: Hastings. A holiday for me to rest and relax and they’ve sent me to a house for invalids. All of them lolling in the chairs back in the gardens, woolen blankets tucked up around their chins. Pathetic. They barely venture out to the seaside, so afraid are they of the cool gusts of wind coming off the ocean. So

I’ve isolated myself, eyes straining out to the water, trying to imagine sailing in a boat out in the midst of it all, sharp prow of it scissoring through the waves.

“Miss?” A whisper so faint and hesitant that it could be the voice of the haze itself. “Miss you really ought to put your bonnet back on.” The source of the raspy voice a strangely disproportionate woman: her torso slender till it meets her hips where it bulges out alarmingly.

Two bodies somehow fused into one. No need for her to wear a bustle. She has the kind of weak, watery blue eyes that make her perfect to be a maid, to take orders.

194 We study my bonnet perched on the sand near my bare toes. The maid eyes both, the toes and the bonnet, but says nothing, hands me my daily glass of tonic water, and then presses something else into my palm, a little glass vial. “Mrs. Spencer thought it might be a help to you,” she says.

“Oh? And how much extra will this be costing me?”

“It’s laudanum. Mrs. Spencer has advised that you use it, what with your nervous pacing last night and all. One or two drops is all that’s needed. Best taken in a glass of water too.” She and her enormous hips scuttle back up the beach. I wait till she’s quite out of sight before dumping their “tonic.” The fools think sea water some kind of miracle drink. I tried once to humor them, the over-powering saltiness of it with that hint of fishy, sea-weediness. I drank the whole glass back without flinching: ladies don’t make faces no matter how unpleasant the drink.

The sand clumps together in revulsion as the salty brine hits it.

The laudanum vial is a pretty little bottle, thick, emerald glass with a plump body. The stopper gives a satisfying pop when I pull it loose. Alcohol is the over-powering smell at first, but beneath lingers several notes: a medicinal quality and a sort of spicy muskiness that’s strangely tantalizing. I grind the bottle in the ground beside my bonnet and dig my toes into the soft sand of the beach, driving them deeper and deeper till my feet are lost beneath the surface.

Maybe it’s a form of punishment, them sending me here. They could have figured it out, the lie. That I wasn’t really visiting Jeanette. Or maybe it was Lydia. Silly girl not knowing her place. I’m the older sister and yet she acts as though she is wiser, knows more about the world than me. She hardly even gets out of the house but for her job. But after she caught me creeping

195 up the stairs coming home from The Swan, my dizzy steps up the flight of them, the beer on my breath.

When I came back from the Hermitage my parent’s house didn’t feel the same anymore, or maybe it was me. The change in my body. I came back without the corset, no longer wore it and nobody made a comment, but they must have noticed my waist line expanded. Even with the corset my hips barely flared out the way they are meant to, the womanly hour-glass shape, but now, without the corset, even less so. My waist becoming more like that of a man’s.

They said I talked too much and too rapidly after I came back. It reminded them of the fever, after Millais hauled me out of the tub posing for him, sent me back to them wrapped in his mother’s woolen blankets. I don’t recall this, but they told me after. How I arrived in the cab, blood drained from my face, lips tinted purple like the mouth of a corpse. And when the fever set in how I ranted as Ophelia, something about bright flowers and heavy stones, my eyes bloodshot.

Any fast words, any excitable tone in my voice they see as illness. If it’s a kind of illness, coming back from that weekend with Dante with that unfamiliar pleasure that seemed to pulse under my skin for days after. If that’s a kind of illness, then I look forward to languishing with it!

But could they know what it meant, the change in me when I came back? There were no outward signs surely. I told him to be careful, to mind how he took the dress off, so nothing was torn. Nothing torn but within. That bizarre mix of pleasure and pain.

They want me to come back from here dull and quiet. That’s how they want me. It frightens them how I’ve changed since I began modeling. Mama said they only wanted it for me as a temporary thing, a way of getting through a slow patch at the shop for Papa. A chance

196 perhaps at a proposal for me from Walter. And now that things have picked up again, and he has more orders, I ought to return to the way things were before, forget my new calling. Modeling makes me restless, makes me want more than I should, when I ought to be a good girl and bow my head and go back to Mrs. Tozer’s again. Go back to my bonnets shut up in the back room stitching and stitching and stitching. Pricking my fingers. Pricking myself and watching beads of my blood well up on my finger tips.

The husk of the bonnet at my feet. I kick it away, my guts sour with that anxiety that catches hold more and more these days, stabbing at my intestines with its sharp needles of excitement dipped in fear. It comes at night when I’m in my bed, and now, just like those moments back in my room, I long to walk the beach to escape it. But I’ve amputated my feet in the sand, only those round bulges of bone where the ankle joins the foot are exposed, everything below it gone. And then I remember the bottle nosed into the sand beside me. My fingers whisk down to catch it up into my palm. The glass warms in the palm of my hand.

197 April 22, 1853

I’m not sure why they’ve sent me to Emma. We’ve met only a few times, when Ford came out with us on occasion to one of the chop houses. But the two of them don’t come out with us often, and after their daughter was born, Emma could no longer come along.

Emma sits on a bench, crouches forward to get closer to the mirror in front of her in the small bedroom she shares with her soon-to-be-husband. There are only the three of us in the room. Her mother, sisters, aunts and any other female relatives ought to be in here, tangled up in a battle to help dress her. This room should be filled with feminine squabbles and the air beaten down by competing perfumes. It is her wedding day after all. But the only force of energy in the room is a little girl, who tugs on her mother’s wedding gown sobbing, her round face contorted in screaming, white nubs of teeth peeking out just below her lips, drool trickling down her chin.

The din from the little girl is overwhelming, and Emma, in the midst of trying to put up her hair, is stroking her daughter’s head, murmuring soothing noises around a mouthful of hair pins.

She looks up as I walk in, spits the pins into her lap. “Oh thank goodness. They’ve sent you to help have they? We’ve met before. You’re the one they called ‘The Sid’ yes?”

“I’d prefer Lizzie.”

“Yes, well we can’t let them pick our names for us can we? No matter how much the ones they choose tend to stick as stubborn as anything.” She leads her toddling, screaming daughter around the bench and then over to me. The little girl freezes mid-scream, noticing me for the first time. Mouth agape she stares up at me.

“I’d hoped Lucy would watch her. The two of them will have to learn to be sisters after all,” Emma says, speaking more to the mirror than to me.

198 I kneel down before the little girl, take her clammy hands in my own and give them a little squeeze. She is still mute, evaluating this strange woman she’s never seen before, then she tugs her doll hands away from mine and reaches out for a lock of my hair, pulling on it gently, a frown of concentration on her small face. She shares her mother’s features almost exactly. They remind me of owls, the two of them: wide oval eyes, sharp, thin noses too small for their faces with their round mouths like the points to an exclamation mark. Their eyes drown out the other features, because they don’t seem to fit with them. But while Emma’s hair is a tawny shade her daughter’s tufts are blonde.

“She’s beautiful,” I tell Emma. “What’s her name?”

“Catherine.” She returns to pinning her hair. Grimacing now and then as she stabs the pins in. “I don’t know what to do with Lucy. Ford expects that she’ll fuse seamlessly in with the rest of the family, but she hardly even knows him. He sent her away to live with her Aunt Helen when her mother died and he’s barely seen her since. You knew that didn’t you, that he had a wife before me?”

“I’m afraid not.” Settling on the hard floor, I pull little Catherine onto my lap, her fingers still entwined in my hair. We are both uncertain of my motherly gesture towards her, she looks up at me, head tilting to the side, and then continues in her examination of my hair. She holds a lock close to her eyes, sniffs it.

“What’s it like?” I ask.

“What?” Emma turns from the mirror, sees me holding her daughter in my lap.

“Being a mother.”

199 She sets the hair pins down, watches Catherine stroke the silk of my dress. Every new thing a discovery to her, every surface must be touched and examined. I can’t remember that feeling, of wanting to experience everything. I go out into the streets and watch people collide against each other, their unexpected interactions on the streets. I see the small moments that others miss half the time, but that fresh sense of hunger is something I can’t get back.

“It’s exhausting at times, but it has its rewards,” Emma says. “Why? Are you-”

“No! No, I’m not. I’m careful. Dante hasn’t made a serious proposal and to have that happen before-” I strangle the sentence off before it can come entirely, but too much is said already. She turns back toward the mirror, the heart of her mouth deflated.

“My apologies, I didn’t mean-”

“Never mind about it. After all,” she says, “I’m the one getting married aren’t I? And anyone who disapproves doesn’t have to be here.” She asks a question without speaking it. I stay still. If only there were a way to tell her that we are not so different, that this wedding gives me hope. We have both sacrificed for passion and she has given up more than most. Others have said she didn’t even try to have the baby done away with, was happy about it in fact, this pregnancy without the security of marriage. Anxiety must have plagued her, but she kept it hidden from him, because if he caught of a whiff of it it might frighten him away. She waited and triumphed instead.

“You must have noticed how no one else is here but you,” she says, her reflection bowing its head, lips pulled thin. “They ought to be relieved at least. When I had Catherine they told me he would leave. Parents see their daughter’s lovers as thieves. As though the man’s only desire

200 is to steal your honor away and then leave you with the responsibilities of that. Ford wanted us to have the child together though. Catherine and I, we’re his new life.”

She smooths the last few fly away strands into the pinch of one of the pins, then rises from the bench. How is it that I never noticed before how very short she is? Her diminutive waist, tiny feet peeking from below her skirts, and such small hands, as much a doll as her daughter really. I, the Amazonian as I stand beside her. “Do you think he’ll ask you soon?

Dante?” she says in a low voice.

I shake my head, smile as if it were nothing to me. Maybe it is. He doesn’t even have a place of his own, and if he did it would most likely not be somewhere I’d want to live. Two people corralled into a cage of rooms together, staring at each other all day, daring each other to see who gets bored or angry with the other first.

The alternative though, all the snippets of rumors about “fallen women,” the ones who hang about in the underbrush of the pleasure gardens, hair tangled with twigs and leaves from their last roll on the ground. The ones who spin their way drunkenly through the pubs, pulling men out into the alleyways with them. My weak health would get in the way of a profession like that.

Better then that he asks me at some point. That we follow the rules this once if only just so that something in the future be predictable. Like Emma though, I know no one will come to my wedding.

201 March 7, 1857

He paints her not you. She has nothing of you this time, but he does. The brush he paints her with, the bristles have a familiar crimson glimmer. Your hair catching the light a moment before he douses it in the paint.

The brush is a delicate one, your hair making for only a fine tipped end. It’s perfect for painting the minute details. He’s mixed a bit of the paint he’s used for her hair with a smudge of white, to stroke some highlights across the canvas. He dips and dips the brush, stroking life into every strand of her locks. She, smiling from the other side of the canvas: Annie.

And every time he dips the brush, paint oozes into your throat. A throat without a body because you are only the watcher. The paint builds, layer upon wet layer till your throat convulses in panic. Your imagined lips stuttering their premonition of stillness. A voice calling,

“Lizzie. . . Lizzie. . .” as the room blurs from focus. You can feel it stretching away out of your line of sight. Your body heaving, retching, coughs loose globs of pale yellow paint.

The rest of your body is visible now, stomach a sunken hollow because you have no desire for whatever it is they bring you on plates. If there’s no hunger then there’s no point in eating. And your stomach rejects it anyways, makes anything consumed into an angry bile that burns your throat.

Your body is in a burnt orange field. A heavy weight on your chest. The weight an owl now, its face leaning over into yours. Its beak clicks open-closed whispering, “Lizzie, Lizzie.”

Voice too urgent for its passive eyes.

“Lizzie!”

202 A burning in your chest. The burning the talons of the owl gouging in and dragging across, pulling skin aside and digging in again, clenching your heart and lungs. Still paralyzed, your disembowelment is just a flicker of red in the lower half of your vision. The owl’s face even closer now screeching, “Lizzie!”

A jolt. And the owl’s eyes are Emma’s, her pale hands pulling a blanket over you.

“Lizzie, how are you feeling?” Her fingers fidget with the sheet; she rolls the top edge between index finger and thumb.

The window behind her is a throbbing white that drives you to bury your aching head into the pillow. Sleep would be the best way of drowning out the screaming in every inch of your body, your stomach especially, turning to cannibalism with nothing to digest but itself.

“I heard you aren’t speaking to him. That’s a fine idea; he should be punished for always breaking his promises to you.” She smooths the sheet down, lifts her hands to fold them across the swollen bulge of her stomach, the second baby she and Ford will be having soon.

If she were only silent you could sleep then. Your hair fans out across the pillow and you search the ends looking to see where he might have snipped off a section of it. He must have come in the night. Broken in because you are back in your rooms at Weymouth Street to be away from him. Or it was her again, jealous Annie with her shears. Dante told you it was a dream, but you know even if she hasn’t done it yet, she’ll want to.

“You mustn’t punish yourself though Lizzie. They said you haven’t been eating much for the past while. Is it true?”

Your shaky hands pulling the hair towards you chunk by greasy chunk. It must be somewhere, that piece missing. He took it because you left and it’s his way of making it known

203 to you that he owns you. Your hands want the warmth from under the blankets, what little there is of it. The air beyond the blankets holds a damp chill, your face is clammy as though someone holds a moist rag to it. The air foul around you. The musk of your own body maybe.

“Remember last year?” she says. “You went off to Bath with Clara. You could do the same now, I’m sure Lyddy would go with you. Leave and go off to Hastings for awhile. Rest and be away from him.”

Doesn’t she know there is no way to be away from him? Even if you leave he will still be capturing you in sketches or in oil. You can almost feel it now, his painting sticking you to the surface of some canvas. Not the now you, but the back then you, the younger you, once bright and glowing. He won’t paint your pale, sunken present, the dark crescents under your eyes.

“It’s because of what happened at the dinner party wasn’t it?” she says.

Ford had brought it up after they’d finished eating, the artist colony they had all wanted to have together. Such a merry source of conversation for them. And it was he who ruined it, had brought up William and Annie and said hadn’t they better be members as well? A direct insult to me since he knew how William had treated me, that humiliating prank where he pretended I was his wife. And to speak of her, Annie.

“You did overact a bit though. Surely that’s not an unfair view of things. He told you he’d foresworn the woman only last year,” she says.

“He’s lying,” I croak. I haven’t spoken for several days and my voice sounds like an angry old woman’s. “The only thing that’s changed is that he doesn’t whine to me of her anymore. Don’t think the two of them aren’t still at it. You can be sure they are. They’re so

204 alike. William or I are away for only a moment and they’re tearing at each other or whoever else they can find in complete and utter lust.” More words than have come from me all week. I’d half-risen from the bed in anger while speaking, but now my body slumps back against it.

“He’s a dog, he is, but I think maybe that you might be-”

“I know what I feel about the two of them and if you don’t believe it you can leave,” I say. She must have talked to him before she came here. Him with that irritating ability of pulling his voice to calm and rational, and convincing them all that it’s only because I’m unwell.

He can speak of the last fit I had, the screaming, the falling to the carpet in frustration. Because he won’t admit the things he’s done with her. Says that I have the same weakness as every other woman, jealousy, that canker sore blemishing something that’s otherwise perfect. Can’t I see that he only admires her as a woman to paint? And I want to say that’s how you admired me too at the beginning. That he paints us then wants to strip us naked. The progression of any artist not in control of himself, who confuses inspiration and lust.

“How about I bring you something to eat? I’ve brought a nice chicken broth from home for you.”

“No point. I’ll only lose it again.”

“Well how about you try it and if your stomach can’t take it, then it can’t take it.” She lifts a bowl she’s had with her the entire time. On an agenda to mother me like the rest of them.

I roll away from her. Of all of them, she should be the one who acts differently. Emma is the one who should come with a bottle of sherry or perhaps wine, and needless gossip. Everything she partakes in too rich and deadly. And here she is trying to be nourishing. As fake as the rest

205 of my visitors. All of them playing my mother because they know she won’t stoop to coming here herself.

“Please Lizzie,” her voice drained of the earlier confidence, a faint voice. She has only spoken this way once before, sounded this feeble. Ford had tired of her drinking and had called me in to deal with the inevitable sickness the next morning. I found her in her washing room stooped over a tub of laundry, sobbing. Her tears had tracked so far down her cheeks that they mixed with the saliva and vomit on her chin. She’d thrown up into the bucket of washing, and her body lay over it in weak surrender. Her pale face had turned to me when I entered, said my name in desperation as though it were another word for forgiveness.

An hour later when my body rejects most of the broth as I’d predicted, Emma crouches beside me as I cry and convulse over the wash basin, the broth mixed with my stomach acid more harsh coming up, warm splashing into the bowl. But a little of it stays, hugs the empty hollow of my stomach. And Emma wraps her arms around me and strokes my hair and murmurs my name and I think, Sister.

206 April 11, 1855

Mrs. Ruskin sits across from me in a room strangled with brocade and lace. Her maid is pouring us both tea, but she barely notices the maid, her focus entirely on me. Dante said I’d be meeting John to discuss my work, but he is nowhere. She promises me that he’s off in his study and that she’s only entertaining me while we wait.

“They tell me you have a tendency towards illness,” she says, her heavily ringed fingers clutching at the pair of sugar tongs. She drops in two cubes, then pauses, then drops in a third. I try not to stare.

“Yes, Mrs. Ruskin, a condition not much improved by that incident posing for Ophelia that I’m sure you’ve heard of.” The heat of the room stifles me, even with the dank chilliness of early spring it’s unreasonable to keep the fireplace roaring, flames pressing their faces up against the glass.

Mrs. Ruskin more grinds than stirs her sugar into her tea, the gritty sound of the granules scraping against the china. Then she lifts her tea from the table, cup rattling against saucer like chattering teeth.

“And you’ve sought the advice of physicians?”

“Just the one, a Dr. Wilkinson, but Dante-Mr. Rossetti and I both feel his diagnosis was preposterous. Curvature of the spine he said! I go to Hastings often though, to take the sea air there.”

“Very good.” She passes me the sugar tongs, but I politely decline. Mama always said sugar in our tea was a decadent luxury and was the first step to losing our figures to an addiction to sweetmeats. “And I must agree that curvature of the spine makes no sense whatsoever. You

207 have the most regal posture.” I murmur gratitude, my voice soft and submissive the way Mama taught me. She would have never thought her lessons would bring her daughter here: an artist looking for patronage. “I only ask after your health because my John is quite sensitive himself and I’ve taken it upon myself to look into remedies for him. I have a little something for you.”

She attempts to rise slowly from her chair, faltering, and I rush to assist, her thin lips smile back gratitude as she uses my arm to straighten herself.

She steps over to the cabinet and I linger near one of the windows, looking for some draft of cool air, the heat muddying my thoughts and making my eyelids droop. It seems as though hours have passed before she returns with a little clay jar. “It’s ivory dust. One makes a kind of jelly with it. A most excellent curative.” I study the ivy pattern twisting up the wallpaper as she exclaims over all the stories she’s heard of friends of friends and their remarkable recoveries.

Dante and the others always speak of returning nature to realistic, imperfect depictions, turning away from caricatures like the symmetrical curves of the vines on this paper.

How many have traded tales of my illness between them? And then they come running to me, eager children, holding their fresh cure in their hands, expecting it to be a magic wand when it’s just a useless twig.

I catch a flash of light blue from the doors to the sitting room. There’s a man standing there in the narrow space of the door that’s been left ajar. Standing and watching us. The blue that caught my eye a neckcloth tied smartly around his collar and tucked into his vest. He sees

I’ve noticed him, he can no longer act as the silent observer and he steps forward into the room.

“John, finished your work at last have you? I’ve just given Miss Siddall the ivory dust I told you about, in the hope that it might be of help to her.”

208 “I’m sure Miss Siddall appreciates it and the expense of such a gift from you.” A distinct tone of chastisement in his voice. There can be no other way of interpreting it. He watched me from the door, my eyes wandering away from his mother holding her gift out to me. He thinks me a spoilt girl. Not someone in need of patronage. And then he winks at me as his mother turns to settle herself back on the chesterfield.

With him beside me now I notice that he’s not a very tall man. I may even be half an inch or so over him, but it’s hard to tell. I drop a curtsey as he bows, a smile twitches on his lips, but only on the right side. The left side of his mouth twists down slightly, a permanent half-scowl.

Dante told me it’s a deformity from his childhood. A dog he had as a boy, a monstrous black

Newfoundland named Lion, jumped him with enthusiasm and, playing too roughly, sunk its teeth into his face. There are no other scars from the attack, but he has a nervous energy about him, as if the adrenaline from the attack were still running through him. It’s not that he visibly trembles, or not that I can see. It’s more like a vibration. He shifts his weight back and forth continually, almost bouncing on his heels for the brief moment we stand there. He won’t look at me, only the floor as if he is embarrassed to meet my eyes. When he does lock eyes with me I find myself wanting to look away, a reversal of roles. Dante’s eyes are like those of a predator’s, but John’s eyes make me far more uneasy; I can’t tell if it’s because they seem to be pleading, or if it’s because I might not really see any emotion there at all. The bright blue neckcloth is understandable when one meets his eyes, it’s meant to set them off, but the colour is not quite the same. His eyes are blue, yes, but murky with grey and slightly darker: a sky fading into dusk, rather than the bright mid-day hue of the scarf.

209 “I want to thank you Mr. Ruskin,” I say. “Buying all of my paintings such as you did; I wasn’t expecting such generosity.”

Ruskin nods in response, takes a chair next to his mother and studies me. I’m left standing on my own. On the ornate mantel opposite us there are several perfume bottles of varying shapes and sizes. One is simple and small, of an emerald green glass that could be a double to the one in my pocket. My fingers circle it, in my skirt pocket. The weight reassures me.

If I asked to be excused, to be directed to their toilette — It would only take a moment.

A few drops wouldn’t be noticed by them, just make the whole situation a bit softer for me. Take away the anxiety sizzling in my stomach. There’s the cloves too, the little tin of them in the same pocket. Always useful to take the smell away.

But it would be rude to ask to be excused when Ruskin has only come in, even if he doesn’t seem inclined to speak with me. He’s picked up a cup and saucer for himself; unlike his mother he avoids the sugar, but instead drowns the tea in cream. The tea must be lukewarm now, more cream than anything else, but his eyes are half-closed in pleasure as he takes a sip.

“Did Dante tell you what I wish to do with your work?” he says.

“Binding them in gold I think he mentioned. It seems too great an honour for such trivial work.” I settle myself back on the chesterfield with his mother. The maid pours me another cup, the leaves spinning drunkenly in the water as she pours. Emma mentioned having an old gypsy woman read her future in them once. I wonder what such a fortune teller would make of the leaves in my cup.

210 “You mustn’t undermine yourself dear girl,” Mrs. Ruskin pinches her lips at the rim of her cup, takes a rather un-ladylike slurp from it. Such behavior must be excused in the elderly.

“My John knows his art,” she continues, reaching over to pat at his shoulder. “If he’s chosen to bind your work in gold then he has reason for it.”

“My mother is correct of course. I have my reasons.” He picks up a dainty cake from a serving plate and it vanishes into his mouth. His cheeks bulge like a little boy as he chews, his mother oblivious to such an appalling lack of manners. With a great gulp helped along with some tea, the mouthful disappears, and he clears his throat, “I may write about such established masters as Turner in my books, but that doesn’t mean I don’t recognize untutored genius in young artists such as yourself.”

“I’m appreciative of such high praise, Mr. Ruskin -”

“John. As a model, and as one who socializes with the ‘Brotherhood,’ as they call themselves, I’m sure you’re used to addressing men by their first names now.” I feel my throat flush at his boldness, I chance a glance over to his mother, but she doesn’t even seem to be watching us anymore, the view of the street out the window has more interest for her.

“I appreciate the praise. . . John,” I begin again. “But I have not been entirely without a tutor. Surely Dante has told you that he has been giving me lessons.”

“Dante? Dante wants for a bit of discipline in his work. His eagerness to be innovative, to throw off the dusty mantle of the Academy style is understandable, commendable even, but a wiser man would have taken what they had to offer first. It would be a shame for you to follow his lead in that way.”

“And whose lead should I follow then?”

211 “My own, if that’s what you wish. Or both of us as you see fit.”

He would offer up his own knowledge so easily, when years ago William, Johnny and

Dante were so desperate for his attentions, when getting John Ruskin to notice a painter was a task filled with more anxieties than a courtship even! Just to have a favorable review from him at the beginning was worth so much to them, and here I am, sharing tea with the man and his mother and he wishes to be my tutor!

“And then there’s the matter of an allowance. I’d be willing to pay you a hundred and fifty pounds for the year as well as purchase any of your produced work that takes my fancy.”

My tongue seems to have shrunk in my mouth. It refuses to function, so I nod, looking like a fool.

“But!” He raises his finger from the rim of his cup to point at me. “But you must promise me that you will not allow yourself to become as lazy as Dante has. He has things to teach you I’m sure, but his work ethic is not one to emulate. This is why I’m helping you, to separate you somewhat from his influence. Give you some independence from him.”

I’d never considered it, that I might have become too dependent, that there would be any other option. The squat clay jar of ivory dust sits on the table. I gather it up into my lap. I’ll make jelly of it every day if that’s what’s needed. I’ll paint for however many hours he might want, till my fingers callus, till my hands cramp. Whatever he asks. But I won’t tell Dante of the way he sees him. There must be a way to balance both of them in my life, keep them both happy in order to take from them what I can.

212 August 16, 1855

“Let’s play like we’re little again,” Emma says, voice loud and wild even though she hasn’t begun drinking yet. She rolls onto her bed and drags me with her. Her bouncing a violent force on the mattress. Her face breaks open in pure joy, laughter free from worry about wrecking the bed, or making too much of a ruckus for Ford and Dante, downstairs closeted away with their pipes and their man-mumblings. I hop tentatively at first, overwhelmed at her loud cackling.

Our home in Blackfriars so quiet compared to theirs: Dante painting in his studio, demanding silence from me.

Emma sees me faltering, spears me in the ribs until I erupt with laughter and throw myself into the movement, the mattress making huffing sounds every time we land and punch the air out of it, whiskers of straw needling out from a tear in one of the corners. Below the sound of the men calling out their farewells, the chunky clunk of the warped front door being forced closed and locked.

When Emma loses her balance the sharp twist and tug of her hand in my own pulls me over as well. The soft thwack of the mattress as our bodies hit it drives out laughter till we’re gasping. Our ribcages pushed to the limit with our laughter, chests aching as it ripples out of us in fits. Emma’s hair, usually so limp, is matted and frizzy with rolling on the bed.

“I brought a special something up here just for us. It’s a secret though, so don’t tell.”

She stretches her arm out to pop open the cupboard door of one of the bedside tables. She holds up her prize, a fine bottle of red wine and she lets its weight dangle there like the body of a freshly caught prized fish.

213 “They always go off to the pub without us whenever you come for a visit. So I thought we’d have a little fun of our own.”

Emma very solemnly pours us each a glass. “God bless the smelly old Thames, forcing you from Blackfriars and sending you back to me every year when it gets a bit too ripe for its own good.” Our glasses chime against each other. We drink at the same time, a long gulp, not the demure sips we think the men must prefer. I run my tongue over my teeth, wanting to polish away the plum stain that will begin building there inevitably. I don’t want it to be too noticeable though, I worry they might come home early, that Dante might see and know I’ve been drinking with her again. He ties it in with the laudanum, thinks I must rely on it as well, but he doesn’t understand the difference. Wine, ale, liquor of any kind, they’re too weak for any effective escape. More often than not they bring the voices that gnaw away at me, small troubles gorging on my anxiety. I only drink this way with Emma because this is her escape, but she wants a partner for it so as not to feel guilty. What precisely she wants to escape from I know not. He’s married her, they’ve had Catherine together. He’s a kind and gentle man, and as far as I can see he doesn’t take off in the evenings for other women.

Emma pours us a second glass in midst of telling me of Catherine, voice a gushing tap of anecdotes, adorable things her daughter has said and done. I’m weak to the influence of the wine, already it begins to film over my thoughts. I couldn’t see how that would be the case as we weren’t to arrive till late in the evening. But Dante is always that way, expecting others will take care of our needs, that when he’s tight for tin someone else will have enough coin to help settle the bill. He sees no humiliation in it, can’t understand why often I excuse myself for a bit of air when it comes time for us all to pay up.

214 “They’re our friends,” he’ll tell me after. “They don’t mind giving us a hand now and then.” But what he fails to realize is that there ought to be a back and forth between friends. A giving with the taking. No, he must know this, but he just conveniently forgets when it comes time for him to offer something.

My head lolls against the pillows Emma and I have layered up behind us against the headboard. I gulp back the top of the second glass as much as I can to lower the level. Would be horrible to slop it on the bedding. My fingers clumsy numb. The glass might not stay level. I might forget to hold it all together.

“Why do you think they do this? Leave us behind sometimes,” Emma says, her tongue sounding thick between her lips, blurring her enunciation.

“You say it as if it only happens when I visit,” I say, dragging the back of my hand across my mouth, hoping to clear away the gumminess at the corner of my lips, a currant coloured streak smudges across my hand.

“Well it’s true. Ford can’t bear to be separated from me till your Dante comes along.”

The burping glug of the bottle as Emma tops up my glass. The man’s a poison, spreading his restlessness to others. Probably teaches them to lie as well. He’s oh so good at that, using the job Ruskin gave him as an excuse. Sneaky, sneaky. Oh he’ll be staying late at the college tonight, and the night before that and the next three nights to follow. He needs to study the students’ work more. He needs the peace and quiet to plan the next few sessions. Always because he wants Ruskin to be proud of him is what he says. Knows how fond you are of

Ruskin. I go to Ruskin for lessons yes, to talk about my progress. Dante says that you love him.

Do you? I love Ruskin’s mind and its unexpected angles. Not the man. That’s not how Dante

215 sees the two of you. And you think of Ruskin often. I feel protective of him, stuck in that damned stuffy house with those overbearing parents. No visits from me and he’d wither up. He needs you. He needs someone, just someone to remind him of his vitality. We go for walks sometimes. I insist on it, to pull him away from his squinting over books and prints, over his own writing. I re-introduce him to the outside world he forgets about sometimes. We watch boys sail toy boats in a fountain near the house. Is Ruskin watching the boats or is he watching you? He watches the boats, I think.

I tell Dante all about it. I tell him, I do. Dante doesn’t trust you. And all there ever is his sullen, sullen looks. Because you don’t bring the bottle with you when you go to Ruskin. I don’t need its liquid fangs when I’m with Ruskin. Dante thinks the two of you are lovers. It’s because we’re not lovers that I don’t need the dose. Ruskin, as much as I may adore him, as many tragic stories of his life and loves as he may share with me, is never someone I feel close to. There will always be a stone wall between us. You always tell yourself when you go for walks with him that he’s watching the toy boats sailing just as you are. I know, I know that’s what I tell myself, but I know he’s watching me. I just don’t know why, or what he wants from me.

“The look on your face, Lizzie!” Emma says. “We’re meant to celebrate tonight and your eyes are as glum as anything.” She fills my glass to the brim and I down it back to half. “Well speak up then, spill your troubles.”

“He’s gone nearly every night again, it seems worse than before,” I say.

“And which of them do you think it is this time?”

“I couldn’t say. Ruth maybe.”

“But you don’t know for sure.”

216 “No, of course not. He has his excuses. Staying late at the college mostly.”

Emma strokes her finger up and down the side of the glass, planning something. I tap my empty goblet down on the bedside table near me, my chin tilting up towards the ceiling, my eyelids heavy with the wine. “We shouldn’t have had so much to drink,” I murmur.

“Nonsense.”

“We’ll sleep in late again and he’ll talk Ford into berating us, you know he will. He doesn’t like when I stay up in your room so long and keep him waiting.”

Emma lets the empty wine bottle slump to the floor, fishes around under the bed and brings out a second bottle. “And what if we weren’t here when he came tomorrow morning?”

I flop my head over to the left to see her better, she’s chewing on her forefinger as she always does when she’s scheming, her cheeks bruised pink with the wine. “How do you mean,”

I ask?

“A ladies’ shopping excursion,” she says, pausing to pull at a hangnail with her teeth.

“We’ll leave before he has time to arrive from the inn Ford has him staying at. Won’t he be shocked when he finds you not there!”

“I’m not sure that’s wise.”

“He’s being inattentive dear Lizzie. Inattentive men deserve to be rebuked a little. And surely he’d want you to have a mantle to match that fine dress you arrived in at the Gardens two weeks ago.”

“I think you’re quite right.”

“Of course I am,” Emma says, “Now as you can see I’ve opened another perfectly good bottle of wine and it would be a shame if went to waste.”

217 * * *

It’s a light tap on the shoulder that wakes me. Emma crouching beside me with last night’s candle relit, already drooling wax down the side of it.

“It’s time,” she whispers.

Our freezing fingers expert and efficient at their morning tasks. Pinching at buttons, pulling at laces. We take turns brushing each other’s hair like the sisters we’ve become over the years.

We slide past Ford, legs draped over the arm of the cushioned sofa he collapsed on last night. His mustached lip twitches as burbles of snoring rumble past it. The stale smell of ale lingers around him. Emma bends down and kisses his forehead as we pass.

Then we’re out the door and into coral glow of dawn that cuts through the steel blue shadows and damp chill of the evening. He’ll be here in an hour. And I’ll be long gone by then.

218 September 24, 1855

Mrs. Kincaid snores loudly to the right of me. All it would take is my forefinger and thumb. A pinch on the nose. Then there’d be peace. But even then, sleep wouldn’t slip into me.

Very doubtful it would anyway. It’s the energy here, so different from London, the language they speak maybe. John decided it was best for my health if I went away to France for awhile, he wasn’t happy with the choice of Paris of course, but I think he gathers that if he can only get me away from Dante he’ll be able to influence me into staying at another of those dull health retreats. I wish he’d see me as more than some invalid that needs seeing to. But it is refreshing to be away from London.

Mrs. Kincaid passed me a French dictionary when we took the boat train out of the city.

She insisted on drilling me on the language while on the steamer to Le Havre and during the train ride to Paris. “Comment ça va?” “Où se trouve l'hôtel?” “Dans quelle mesure le restaurant de partir d’ici?” And I murmured back, “Je ne comprend pas.”

She takes this chaperone business entirely too seriously. But I enjoy playing with the language privately, looking up words in the dictionary, feeling them roll around on my tongue.

Mama taught me a bit of French when I was younger and I can still remember how to go about pronouncing thing. I keep a list of the words I like the sounds of in my writing book where I’ve begun writing poems. Dante’s work inspired me to pick up poetry as well, but I don’t make a habit of letting him see my work as so often the words are bound up with my frustrations with him. As much as I miss Dante it’s a relief to be away from him for a little while.

I find I’ve grown fond of Mrs. Kincaid as well. It’s unusual that I should have when she makes me feel so inadequate. She hasn’t sought it out though, this superiority, it just settled over

219 her, like she sat there watching the minute hand grinding its way slowly around the clock and wisdom deposited on her a fine dust of knowing. That’s the way she makes her life philosophy sound anyways. She spoke of her husband, her missing him already even though it’s only been a week since she’s seen him last. I remained silent and she said, “When you’re married you’ll know the feeling of it.” I said nothing still and she carried on, “You’ll see. The proposal just arrives one day, when you least expect it. You’ll be married to my dear cousin soon enough.”

Dante never told me just how distant of a relative she is, but if she’s not far away in kilometers, or through the bloodline, then she must certainly be a great distance from the family gossip. I can only imagine how they must all speak of me. Wondering how long it will be before he finds the right woman.

Maybe my fondness began at the dinner party Dante threw for our departure, with all of his own family of course. Her family too, supposedly, and yet I could tell she felt just as isolated as I. She confided as much to me as we lurked in the corner with our glasses of sherry, how they were all strangers to her. She wouldn’t criticize them directly, but surely she must agree that

Christina, Dante’s supposedly brilliant poet-sister, is a cold, dried up little husk of a woman. A born spinster.

Mrs. Kincaid’s long, oval face stretches along her pillow across from me. The wrinkles around her eyes and mouth, life’s erosions, have been filled in again by the darkness. She told me as we talked at the party that she welcomed the wrinkles when they came. “Most of them are from smiling and laughing you see,” she said. “I’m not as thin as I used to be either, but I don’t mind it. It just shows you’re pampered.”

220 Her snores take on a rhythm, sucking air through her partially stuck together lips and then a rumbling exhale through her nose like some congenial mumbling bear. I clamp my eyes shut, try to push the noise into the background, think instead of the excitements that await me in Paris.

We rushed through the streets in such a hurry to our lodgings this afternoon that we hardly had a chance to see anything, but tomorrow will be different. I’ll test out the words I’ve taught myself.

* * *

“Miss Siddal, would you be so kind as to assist me?”

Mrs. Kincaid has her back to me, her fingers holding up the laces of a corset.

My fingers remember the method of it, the way to grip the laces so you can torque them as tight as they’ll go. She sucks in her breath, and I watch as the corset shapes her, her waist so much slenderer than when she sat in her dressing gown this morning, dining on the fresh fruit and cream brought up to us.

Standing there in my petticoats I remember the feel of it, the corset, its firm pressure on my ribcage, like two hands gripping around my waist. I slip on my dress, a pale blue one that

Dante has always said makes my hair look like flames against a spring sky. In the mirror my dual self puts her hands on her hips, judging, trying to remember the body of the girl that used to wear the corsets.

Mrs. Kincaid’s face looms up behind the shoulder of the dual Lizzie, smiling. “My how beautiful you are,” she says, fastening the buttons that run along the back of the dress. “To be that age again, and in Paris too.” She steps around beside me. “Do you know what a young woman ought to do in Paris?” she asks.

“I have the distinct feeling you do, so I’m not even sure I ought to wager a guess.”

221 “There’s a dressmaker I’ve been to several times here. Finest craftsmanship you’ll see in

Paris. She’ll make you a dress as light as air, and rich as any of the desserts here. And when you return home, think of it. Being able to tell your friends you have a gown from Paris.”

She insists on walking there, says going by foot is the only way to really breathe in the city, experience it at its fullest. When we came in last night the streets were scattered only here and there with people, the light from the lamps so dim they were only flat silhouettes. But in the early morning the streets are writhing with people. The sun is fresh in the sky, its light so much sharper than the light in London, bouncing back in searing highlights from store windows and puddles on the ground.

A group of young men race past us, one’s shoulder glancing off mine in a sharp blow, “Je règret!” he calls back, baring his teeth in what’s trying to be a smile, his teeth so broad and long it’s a wonder they fit in his mouth and aren’t spilling out from his lips. I laugh in response to his awkward expression and he laughs too, relief relaxing his lips, burdened from having to contain such a massive mouthful of teeth.

There’s the flower girls just as London has, only here they work together in groups. How the Brotherhood would’ve bickered to have their pick of them, if only they could see the group of three I’ve just noticed. All of them with the flowing hair of medieval maidens, some of their merchandise braided into the locks. And whereas the London girls will squawk out at you, cracked lips braying their prices, these women sing to bring in the business, clutching their flowers earnestly, heads tilted back and mouths perfect “o’s” of harmony. Three Pre-Raphaelite stunners of my very own.

222 “Oh Mrs. Kincaid, how beautiful,” I say, her arm linked through mine tugging against me as I stop before the flower girls. Dante would want to see such a sight, so haunting, so holy they pull themselves free from the debris and grime of the street by their voices alone. My fingers twitch for a pencil, my sketchbook. The image framing itself as I study them. Breaking my arm away from hers I dip my fingers into the large pockets of my gown, fingers pinching down on my sketchpad and pencil, drawing them forth.

“You wouldn’t mind would you?” I say.

She looks down at my pencil and paper, nodding eagerly, “Oh by all means go right ahead. You’ll sketch the girls then will you? How exciting! I used to draw myself when I was younger, had a tutor from the Academy who would come in once a week and — Oh!”

I’ve dropped to my knees in front of them, a stone in a river of tulip-bright skirts, my sketchbook open and balanced in my lap as I work in their rough outline, lead working fast against the paper. There’s no reason for them to stay in the one spot, they have to be pinned to the paper before they move, the bony angles of the elbows and shoulders, hair as thick as un- spun wool slipping down their shoulders. Their lips dabbed red with the crush of a few geranium petals, the evidence of this littered at their feet, wet little twists of red petals. I sketch the petals in as well.

The girl in the center is the one who draws the most attention to herself, sings in the loudest and clearest of the voices, her lips stretching out in dedicated enunciation with language that darts in and out of meaning for me. The full intention of the song always to be a mystery, but she and her nature are revealed to me, because as I sketch, my knees driving down into the hard angles of the stones beneath me, she notices me for the first time, catches my eye as she

223 sings. She looks down at my sketchbook and her mouth forgets its task of enunciating the words and pulls up in a smile, still open with the song pouring out looser from her now. The smile perfects it. Luckily hers is the face that I haven’t gotten to yet, and my hand works quickly to capture it, a few lines to trace the arc of that singing grin, with her teeth half visible below her upper lip, a charming gap between the two front ones. A human quality to the nymph-like appearance of the trio. They might make a good background group for a painting, a chorus of fairies singing in joy behind some celebration of love. I’m working on no such painting now of course, but one must always keep these little bits and pieces, these flashes of inspiration for when the right time comes.

The singing stops and a few of the passing strangers call out hurrahs and clap, throw a few coins their way for the song alone. The girls blush with their exertion and gather the splash of bright coins at their feet, the two on either side of the leader stooping to pick up the glittering drops fresh from the pockets of the passersby, but the leader doesn’t trifle with that. She’s continued to hold my gaze and walks boldly towards me. I, still on my knees, smoothing out a few bits on the sketch. She hunches down beside me, admiring the sketch, smiling and nodding, and then she holds out a rose towards me, a yellow one, murmuring words to me, but all I can catch is “belle” and “vous.”

“She’s asking if you want to buy it” Mrs. Kincaid nudges me. “You did use her a model after all.”

“Of course! Oui, oui!” I tell her, rummaging for my coin purse. I drop a few coins in her hand. She holds the rose out to me, soft smile of a working woman who’s just made a sale.

224 “Non, non. You keep it, please.” I push the rose away and she nods, looking satisfied and returns to the others, the coins glinting from between her fingers.

“Oh! Your dress!” Mrs. Kincaid is brushing at my knees and it’s true my dress is soiled with soot and dirt where I knelt, sketching. I leave her flapping uselessly at me, like a bothered wren trying to rebuild its nest.

Across the street, I see him. Or I think it could be him. A man wearing an olive green coat. It looks so like his, and surely it’s an unusual color of jacket for any other sort of man to wear. And from the back he looks so much like him. His arm around a thin waist, a waist drawn in, sculpted, redefined. Her dress perfectly tailored to accentuate it, draw attention to its curves.

His hand pressed much too firmly around this woman, as if he owns her. He turns his head to the side and it’s a stranger. Of course it is. He would have written, he would have let me know.

Men are never much for surprises. It was just the jacket and the wild black hair that made me flinch with recognition. I find my hand at my hip, where his would have rested if I were that woman, only my own feels plump and fleshy, free beneath the layers of petticoats to breathe and move. But vulnerable also, exposed.

“. . . we just went back now it would be a quick enough change.” Mrs. Kincaid’s voice flares up into my attention.

“Sorry?”

“Well your dress is ruined.”

“All the better reason to get a new one then, wouldn’t you agree?” I link my arm back in hers and allow her to lead on.

225 * * *

“I think the pale green, what do you think Mrs. Kincaid?” I ask my friend. The dressmaker has laid several fabric swatches before us and the green silk pulls out from the rest as a bit unusual.

“I’d go for the rose myself, but then you are the artist aren’t you.”

“Miss Siddal est juste,” agrees the dressmaker. “Le vert sera fonction de son complexion bien.” I look over to Mrs Kincaid, hoping for a translation.

“She’s agreed with you.”

The dressmaker helps me up onto a little stool and begins her measurements. She nudges a pair of spectacles up her nose with a knuckle, squints at her tape measure and then jots down a figure on a pad of paper. I feel less like a woman standing before her and more like a mannequin. A familiar feeling now that I think of it.

“Excuse me,” I say, she looks up, little black pupils buried in the pucker of her squinting eyes. “Might I have a corset fitted at the same time? I’ll need a new one.” She nods sharply and then back to her dress. As I stand there I take one long, last deep breath, feel the air as it makes the journey. At the throat only a little expansion, but one that grows as the air travels downwards, swelling my lungs, my ribs. It’s not something I think of often, the ease with which

I take this deep breath. Breathing, such an automatic thing. The only time I’ve ever thought of it before is those moments when he won’t listen. When I force him to hear. The deep breath in is part of gathering myself up before screaming my frustration at him, my ribcage, bars unlocking to let me loose.

226 November 12, 1855

He’s written letters. He always does. They feel like a blessing when they first come and

I slice through the envelope to read the contents. But that space of time between them is often hellish. Words which were once so sweet I pull apart for silent meanings, for proof that his attention has begun to wander. But for once the roles are reversed. Just as I had hoped, I have gained the upper hand by being the one to leave while he is left behind. His words, as much as they might try to hold it back, thrum with his jealousy of what adventures I might be caught up in, what fascinating people I might meet, what men. My responses back are carefully crafted, filled with loving sentiments, but also with an essence of distraction. I’d studied the art of it in his own letters to know exactly how to capture it, that sense that the loved one is not entirely present in your thoughts. How to work at his mind with the words. Now with him rapping on the door I want him to be left a little longer in suspense. Want to savor my moment of triumph.

Hold it back till it’s perfect.

“But why not now? Why not lunch?” he says. That plaintive whine when I won’t let him have what he desires. “Or if not lunch, then at least let me in now. Your keeper, my cousin, is off at her shopping. Why not an appetizer, on your bed. You know how they say good exercise benefits the appetite.”

“You’re terrible, absolutely dreadfully crude. And you must wait till dinner tonight to see me. Now go run off with your sculptor friend.”

“Alex? But he’s become so dull to me already. Please Guggums!”

“No, I won’t change my mind. Be back here at five to pick me up for dinner. I refuse to see you till then.”

227 “Cruel woman!” he moans, melodramatic as always, and I hear the muffled thudding of his boots on the hardwood staircase as he leaves the inn.

The sketches I’ve been working on call to me from the little drawing table pulled into service for my artistic purposes. The trio of girls singing and selling their flowers transformed in their medieval garb, and yet it’s still unclear what kind of painting they could belong to.

Nonetheless they’re coming along rather well, and that, coupled with my continued victories against Dante make me feel giddy, over-agitated. It’s a good feeling, it makes me want to pace the room, run out onto the street and walk for blocks on my own. It’s overwhelming to hold inside, this energy spurring me on, making me leap from task to task unable to settle on any one thing.

The bottle. It wouldn’t hurt. Just a few drops. There’s hardly been a need since I came here. Foolish Ruskin, thinking the place would be bad for my health when it’s done nothing but good. And with Mrs. Kincaid there I simply can’t take as much as before. Because Dante probably told her and asked her to keep an eye on me. They’re always doing that to me. Not trusting, treating me like a child. Never any proof of this of course, that he’s said anything to them. But when I excuse myself sometimes for a little dose I can sense it. How they must all pause, listening to hear the smooch of the rubber stopper leaving the bottle. They don’t say anything, but they’re all thinking the same thoughts: disappointment at my weakness. Emma says she knows the feeling, how Ford will check the wine rack, checking to see if there’s any bottles missing, or if she’s hidden any around the house.

The bottle, the bottle. . . My fingers pulling through my packing, fingers parting petticoats, tunneling through handkerchiefs and stockings. The bottle wrapped in a bright bit of

228 cloth, its texture slippery. The texture of the fabric picked so it would be easier to find when the panic sets in. When the need is great. And there, that reassuring lump, like a plump stone in the folds of the smooth cloth. I pull it free and send a trickle of calm down my throat, eyes shuttered closed in relief. Then I tuck it safely back away.

The haze lifts by the time the late afternoon approaches and Mrs. Kincaid is back and distracting with the display of her purchases for today. She describes the shop each came from, the excellent quality of whatever materials they use. It’ll be a relief to escape for the evening, see Dante for the first time in months.

The dress, and the corset were finished a week before he came. I’ve admired them often since they were delivered. Smoothing the precious folds of green cloth out on my bed, and then hanging it once more in the cabinet. Mrs. Kincaid begged me to wear it out with her, but it had to be saved for when he arrived. There’s a special feeling when wearing a dress for the first time that wanes each time it’s slipped on afterward, till it becomes a scrap of cloth again. The dress must be at its full power tonight. After a month apart maybe he will finally ask the right question and not turn back.

Mrs. Kincaid arrives just in time to help me dress. The corset lies on the bed, it slips easily over my head settling around my torso, waiting to boa-constrict around me. Mrs. Kincaid begins tugging on the laces, the breath crushed out of me like a tight fist has grabbed my lungs and squeezed. One more deep breath sucked in as she gives a last hard pull and ties up the back for me. After that my breathing is shallow — the light, minute breaths of a proper woman. My fingers run tentatively over my sides, a soft body fully encased, a hard outer-shell shaping flesh to the desired curve of the perfect woman.

229 The dress is a veneer of glamour over my newly reformed curves; Mrs. Kincaid helps me straighten it and do up the fastenings on the back. Then she insists on doing my hair, pushing me onto the stool before the mirror and jerking a brush through each strand. She tries to talk around the hair pins held between her lips, thoughts still fixed on her exploits of today. All she ever talks of is shopping, and it’s become quite tiresome. At first I enjoyed her outings, but one can only buy so many things before it becomes an empty exercise in tossing coins around. After this trip I will no longer feel lesser than her. Dante will surely ask me to marry him, the timing couldn’t be better, but I will not allow marriage to make me dull like it has Mrs. Kincaid with her endless shopping trips and tedious gossip. The pins scrape along my scalp, but I don’t flinch, any little discomfort is worth bearing for Dante’s undivided attention and his proposal.

Mrs. Kincaid makes me stand so we can properly admire me before the mirror, licks her fingers to smooth a few frizzy bits on the hair she’s twisted back. She fussily fluffs out the skirt, tugging it this way and that to get the shape just right.

In the mirror is a refined looking woman, hair elegantly styled, body shapely and firm.

The color is perfect, just as I thought. Other women are so fortunate with their skin flushed with colour, but with my continual bouts of illness my skin has a grey-green tinge in comparison to them, looks almost translucent. The green of the fabric suits it though, sets it to glowing like an anemone on a bed of moss and my hair looks all the more vibrant against it as well. If there were any version of myself he would pledge himself for life to, it would be this one.

When I open the door for him he says nothing for awhile. Simply stands there, holding his hat in his hands, looking awkward almost, shifting his weight from foot to foot. But his eyes say something else in their predatory appraisal, memorizing every new line and angle the dress,

230 the corset bring out in me. It was good to make him wait, to build up the anticipation. He tires of things so easily, the dress would have been nothing to him by the time the evening came.

“Well?” I say. “Haven’t you anything to say about the new dress?” I straighten my back, lift my chin like an aristocrat and turn from side to side as if showing the dress to a buyer.

“Paris has made a new woman of you!” he says. “What have you done to my dear Lizzie, cousin?” he calls to Mrs. Kincaid, who has settled herself with some knitting next to the fireplace.

“I’m afraid I’ve barely done a thing. I may have pinned her hair up, but you’re right, it’s the city, it’s quite inspired her.”

Dante takes me by the hand and leads me down the stairs. “And to think,” he says,

“Ruskin was only just bothering me about making you leave Paris the other day, the old fool.”

“He’s still insistent on that is he?”

“That, and that I shouldn’t have come visit in the first place. He’d have me locked away painting all day if it were up to him.”

“He might have a point.” If it weren’t for Ruskin, Dante would hardly ever get anything done. Dante’s jaw twitches in irritation.

“I think he’s jealous mainly, that’s why he didn’t want me to come.”

“Oh?”

“Jealous of the fact that I’ll have you all to myself and him unable to visit.”

“You should be kinder. None of this would be possible without him. And the situation with Effie, it must still be difficult.”

231 Dante snorts, “You know she’s much happier with Johnny. If Ruskin really wanted a wife he’d learn how to treat her properly.”

“Still. . .”

His attention has already wandered away from our conversation and is focused on the street where a taxi parked beside the curb waits for us. The driver tips his cap to me, and the horse in harness mouths the bit, rattling the metal against his teeth.

It’s true that Ruskin may flirt with me a little, but never in front of Dante and never with any deliberate intent. Besides, he’s so awkward and clumsy with it that one can’t help but feel a bit sorry for the man. Art is everything to him and people still very much a mystery. Having him there, waiting in the background, fussing and writing his letters and pestering Dante about me, it’s a comfort somehow. He’s stubborn about his foolish concerns, insistently writing to Dante and me about any method he’s thought of to improve my health. Doggedly persistent about it until I follow his advice. Dante makes efforts to find remedies for me, but often loses interest in them before he can sort out where to find the right ingredient for a tincture, or just where he put the address of some health spa an acquaintance had mentioned.

Dante grips my hand, his rigid wrist and arm helping to guide me into the carriage. I’m grateful for the seat. The brief walk down the stairs in the inn has already made me short of breath. My chest strains against the corset, trying to tear its way through for air.

And then my breathing cuts off entirely. There’s a strange man, sitting there, across from me. Why would he have allowed the taxi to stop and wait for us, or did he sneak in without the driver being aware?

232 Dante’s laughter as he climbs the stairs behind me, “Oh Lizzie, your face! I am sorry. I forgot to mention we’ll be having a guest with us tonight.”

“Oh.” The boning of the corset digs into my skin, driving a straight line across it. When

I take it off later the marks from it will be visible, the red creases from the boning, the criss - crossing outlines of where the laces tie up in the back, the few raw rashes that always used to manifest where my shoulder blades rub against the rough fabric. All those old reasons why I abandoned this foolish undergarment in the first place.

“This is my friend Alex I told you about, the sculptor, the tradesman.”

Alex is a broad-shouldered man with coarse blonde hair jutting from his skull. His bulge of a nose and his close set eyes make him plain, but his broad grin is sincere. His easy joy makes his features slightly more attractive.

“Dante insists that what I do is a trade and not an art. But then again, I’m actually making money and Dante doesn’t believe artists can do that, so I see how he’s confused.”

I smile despite myself. It’s not the man’s fault he’s here. If Dante is traveling with him it would be terribly rude to abandon him their first night here in favor of my company. This a constant thing though, these unnecessary people. And I am left unable to say anything to rebuke him for this because God forbid I should make some sort of a scene in front a stranger.

When Dante tells us of the restaurant he’s picked out I say nothing, stare hard into my gloved hands, forcing away the feelings, wishing I had found a way to slip the bottle along with me. I’d thought I’d be hopeful and not bring it with me as usual, thought the dress would give me the strength I usually rely on. The firm curve of the bottle cradled in my palm, I won’t allow the thought to catch hold in my mind. I weave and unweave my fingers together, think of my

233 sketches. Mustn’t ruin tonight with an outburst or maybe he’ll leave early. He’s done that before, to punish me. Must be all smiles and continue my waiting.

* * *

“We must see you in Johnny’s masterpiece tomorrow. You never really had a chance to look at it when it was finished did you?” Dante says.

We are in a café not far from my lodgings with Mrs. Kincaid. On the odd day when I rise before her, which isn’t often, I forego the breakfast at the inn and come here instead, take my morning tea with what they call a croissant. Flakey, buttery, it’s absolutely decadent with some strawberry jam smeared on top. It’s become one of my passions since Mrs. Kincaid and I arrived here back in September. The waitress working behind the counter even told me the history behind my favorite treat, how croissants first arrived in Paris in a Viennese bakery, and how the

Parisians were inspired to make them more rich and decadent.

I waited awhile before bringing Dante here, wanting everywhere we went together to be a new discovery for us both. Our relationship re-budding like a sickly tree miraculously bearing healthy new growth. It was Annie that was the poison, the teasing pout of her mouth, how she’d always find a way to murmur something in his ear whenever I entered the room. That continually tousled hair and flushed face as if she’d come from making love to someone.

William was terribly naive believing her to be just a barmaid when it was clear to everyone where she made her extra tip money. Poor stubborn man, he’ll come back from his holy land to find his efforts a waste. As if a woman like that could ever be refined. And with Dante here for these ten days of bliss she will most likely become bored and find a different set of bedsheets to tangle herself up in. One can only hope that her restlessness will be of benefit to me this time.

234 “Lizzie, my Guggums, are you listening?”

“Forgive me,” I say dabbing a smudge of jam from my lips.

“I think you’re more in love with that croissant than you are with me!”

“Oui, c’est magnifique!”

“You never told me you could speak French, and here I’ve been the one ordering for us everywhere. How did you manage to pick it up?”

I spread more jam across the end of my croissant, sink my teeth into it, savoring the sticky sweetness cocooned in buttery warmth. “My mother taught me a little when I was a girl.

But it’s been Mrs. Kincaid mostly, and of course I’ve picked some up from the locals.”

“So my cousin has been agreeable to you then?” he asks.

“Oh yes of course.” I consider telling him about the snoring and her ceaseless shopping excursions, but decide against it.

“So what of it then, will you go with me to the Paris Exhibition so we can admire you as

Ophelia?”

“What about Alex. Will he come?” Alex is a charming enough man, and I’ve not seen him since our initial dinner together. All the time with Dante alone has been divine, but this might be another opportunity for a proposal and wouldn’t it be just like him to invite that sculptor along and ruin it all for himself.

“Oh I’m sure the man can manage a few days without me. I’ll spend today with him and then we’ll go to the exhibition tomorrow. As long as you promise to dress your part as stunner again with that new dress of yours.”

235 * * *

There’s a ritual to looking at the paintings I’ve posed for. A ritual born out of fear. I ignore my double in the painting at first, focus on the other figures instead. She never quite seems to be me, this placeholder for my body on the canvas, so it’s easier to have a look at the others who appear in it with me. So many of them will be familiar and the comparison between their real-life bodies and the ones stroked out in paint becomes a game. But it’s playing this game with myself that I can’t face. And that’s the kind of game Johnny’s painting forces me into.

Dante settles his weight onto his left leg beside me, eyes fixing on one section of the painting, making a close study of it. I only wish I knew which part, and what he’s able to pull from it. I’ll ask him about it later, and he’ll tell me of course. And as many details as he lays down, as many dissections of a work that he offers me, there’s always the feeling that he’s left something out, perhaps on purpose. If he doesn’t reveal everything I’ll never be able to match him, but will always be his peripheral vision of a woman artist.

Eyes back on the painting, I still manage to avoid myself. Look instead at the landscape surrounding the main figure: the sprinkling of white blossoms on a splash of bush on the bank, the willow that leans in a tortured arc with its branches spiking forth from it, the bullrushes on the near bank echoing those lines, the soft pillow of seaweed. All of this framing the body in the middle. The body. Have never thought of it that way before, even though I saw the painting in progress back in Johnny’s studio. But it’s been so many years since Johnny called me over to see the progress he’d made painting me, the woman floating in the river. It’s a body, not a woman.

236 Remember the pose, how the focus was on Ophelia. This character, this woman. A living character from a play. He could have painted her living, maybe even the scene where she wanders out into the river. But Johnny chose a different time; he’d waited till she’d swallowed the life out of herself in the current of the river. Johnny painted her dead, unable to resist, and my body in her place. All the work that had gone into trying to understand her character.

Reading the play and lying there in the tub, thinking about a broken and desperate woman and those thoughts weren’t even needed. No thoughts needed at all.

Look at the body now and see what he made of you. This pose, above all the others represents what it is to be a model. How the body is locked in rigor mortis even when you pose for the living. The body in all its movement and expression locked in the cage of a chosen moment. Your cupped hands frozen in place. The dress, the one he’d found that was being thrown out, swallows your body, encases your legs, creeps up over your breast. Its heavy embroidery and pearls crushing lungs, and crawling round your throat to strangle you. Cinereal lips lie slack The eyes remind you of the filmed eyes of the fish you see in the markets.

“Do you know what’s always struck me about it?” Dante says, and you won’t leave the painting to look at him. “It’s the best likeness any of us have ever done of you. We’ve all painted you, but none have come so close to capturing you as Johnny. It’s remarkable.”

There’s a window to the right of you both and the way the light catches it makes it both a view to the world outside and a mirror for everyone within. In the portrait it holds of you on a single pane of glass, you see the death Johnny saw, that maybe they all see. The flesh so pale it’s hard to imagine any blood must run between the layers, your collar bone jutting, the skeleton trying to escape the elastic hold of your skin. Your eyes are the only contradiction. Even

237 through the dusty film on the glass, and your heavy lids, they remain clear of the death haze the woman in the painting has. But the haze will come. And this woman is beautiful in death, lovely because she’s young. Preserved at her perfection.

How long before you begin to grow stale, to go past the height of your beauty? And when that happens no one will blame him for not marrying you. No one will marry a ruined, worn out woman. There will always be a new stunner to spot in the gardens, or walking by the shops. Not even Annie will be good enough, there will always be another woman with a body and a face whose shape is yet to be drawn. But for what in the end? For the sake of the paintings. They don’t ask themselves who the women are, what it is that they desire, only make a drama for them based on the face they see and pull the woman through the story they wish for her, and abandon her when the tale dulls.

238 May 12, 1856

He purchased the tickets before even bothering to ask if I wanted to go. He thinks it will be reassuring. He tells me, “You’ll understand when you see her that my interest in her is merely an aesthetic one.”

It’s only because William has returned and Annie is too busy to see him now. That’s why he’s found this new one, this Ruth Herbert. She’s the lead in the play we’ve gone to tonight,

Retribution, by Tom Taylor.

I wanted to be left alone with my work this evening. My new version of Clerk Saunders has only just begun to cooperate with me. Trying to capture details with watercolour is so bothersome. I’ve given up entirely on the finicky details of the cityscape seen through the round window of Margaret’s chamber, but for painting robes, and their folds of fabric, the medium is superb and so that’s where I’d started this afternoon.

There’s a roar when Ruth strides out onto the stage, it comes predictably from the men and Dante joins in with the rest of them. She acknowledges her audience with a coy half-turn of her head, her eyelids half-closed as if drowsy, but the look only lasts a moment before her attention is on the man playing her husband. She’s rebuking him for some wrong, I can’t be bothered to follow the plot of the thing though as we’re only fifteen minutes in.

Her voice is deeper than one would think would be attractive, but it matches the dramatic arch of her eyebrows painted up excessively for the stage. She delivers her lines with perfect timing, lips scrunched together in acted distain, the full, plump mouth of youth. With her thick mane swept back into two plaits she could be Annie’s sister.

239 Dante told me before we left that I haven’t chosen the right colour for the cloak of Clerk

Saunders in my painting. He feels the green is too vivid, that Margaret should be wearing the emerald hue for her dress instead since she is the one still living and her lover Saunders the ghost. Surely he should be the one wearing the grey-blue shade I’ve painted her chemise in. He feels this way because he sees the story from the point of view of the man, killed by the woman’s brothers for loving her. In his mind Saunders is the victim. He can’t comprehend that it is

Margaret who suffers most for the man’s actions. After all it was he who convinced her to let him into her chambers and in giving away her honour so freely she has bound herself to him.

And now, in the moment I’ve chosen, his ghost returns to her to make her swear her faithfulness.

She begs for one last kiss but he tells her it will bring death. She, though living still, may as well be dead. She’s cursed herself by pledging a troth to a dead man who will never let her love another.

Beside me Dante is wheezing with laughter. He leans into his mirth, his hands layered over his belly. He’s leaning away from me. I used to make him chuckle sometimes; he’d praise my sharp, sarcastic tongue then kiss me, but her performance is different. She is not afraid to make a fool of herself to entertain the crowd. She stumbles and falls, she kicks and screams in tantrums, and blurts absurd things. The men bellow glee at her every clownish move, her plaited hair whipping back and forth as she tears up and down the stage, her lines ringing out across the rows of us. Her perfect features animated with the energy of a child.

I’ve painted Margaret kneeling before Saunders and given her my hair. Saunders has the posture of a beggar, his hands out in supplication, but there is no real desperation to it. Dante made no remark about her red hair. I want him to ponder it, see the hidden message I’m painting

240 to him through this simple scene, but he’s too distracted. Margaret’s face and hands remain only sketched in at this point. She’s holding the wand that she passes over to her lover to signify her troth and free his spirit, she grips it on either end with her hands, but she holds it between her lips too. Gripping it with her teeth like a little dog that’s fetched a simple stick and brings it back to his master, tail wagging. This was sketched in after Dante had seen my work. A bit of a risk.

Her holding the wand between her teeth and her red hair. It might become too obvious for him.

I want him to question it, yes, for it to leave him with a feeling of unease, but he must not know outright that the painting is meant to manipulate him.

The crowd has broken into applause, some of them rising for a standing ovation, Dante joining them. Looking up at him I take in his fixed stare, the way he lifts his hands out to her as if to direct their applause only to one.

Crushed between the rows of seats we make our slow progression from the theatre. At the end of the row Dante slips out and loses himself in the general mass. For a moment I see his square shoulders draped in his olive jacket, his tangled dark hair tumbling over the collar at the back, and then the crowd has cut between us. His head, still visible between the bodies sandwiched between and around us, doesn’t glance back. And with a few steps more it is gone altogether.

The current of the crowd takes me out the doors of the theatre into the lobby where I follow the press of bodies to the line up of ladies at the toilettes. Women lean against the wall tugging at their gloves to strip them off, whisper into each other’s ears, help pin back any of their friend’s stray hair.

241 Flower girls and other vendors push through the crowd, bellowing out prices and products, bundles of flowers, roasted nuts in cones of paper. Skirts and elbows brush up against me. The conversations turn into an incoherent babbled. Back at our home there is only the ticking of the clock, the sounds from the street and the river of course, but all of those are distant, not rubbing up against me, and pushing me here and there. And between these waves of bobbing heads he’s nowhere to be seen.

Surely he wouldn’t leave. He vanishes sometimes at events we’ve gone to, takes off for an hour or two, but he always comes back. He wouldn’t forget about me here. But nothing, his face nowhere. The play was a long one though, with no intermission, so surely he’s just using the toilettes as well, and we’ll meet at the front door and his arm will swoop through mine and pull me out through the chill of the spring air back to Blackfriars where he’ll build us a merry blaze of a fire in our fireplace. My fingers flick against each other, twitch, fiddle, then find the smooth side of the bottle, my thumb running over the surface of it, as though it were a lucky stone for skipping, or the side of a magic lamp.

In the privacy of the toilette I take a little sip, corners of my mouth scowling at the taste, and then I pull two cloves from the little satchel packed beside the bottle and pop them in, push them to the back of my mouth and crush them with my molars and then suck hard so if he were to kiss me all he would taste is their earthy sourness. But perhaps that is wishful thinking.

Slipping past the long line of women still waiting their turn, the dose begins its work.

The anxiety-inducing buzz of noise muffles to a warm hum. Cackles and screams of laughter no longer make my body lurch at the offense of their brash volume, now I find myself echoing them. For every laugh a smile curling its way up my lips. The bodies too close before are

242 peeling away, any nudge just a whisper of feeling now in my arms and sides. The feeling of a wide corridor of space opening up before me. The features of faces smudged as though I were trying to see them from miles away.

Then I spot them. Somehow right beside me and in sharp detail even though I am across the room from them. I notice her first, lamplight cresting the waves of her hair, her braids trailing down the back of her blue dress. And my gaze wouldn’t stay with her, would dart away with jealousy, but for that flash of olive coat beside her. Those blunt-fingered hands of his. One rests on her shoulder, the other holds one of the flower bouquets being hawked earlier. A bundle of violets that he passes to her. She takes them with a playful smile that she hides quickly behind the violets as she presses her nose to them, eyes lifting from them to him, over his gift. And then that gaze leaves his, and meets mine, or that’s how it seems.

And it’s her eyes that make her different from Annie. It wasn’t clear before when she was on stage, but now it’s obvious. Annie’s were the selfish eyes of a child, one who sees only what will bring her pleasure and ignores the rest. But Ruth’s eyes are speaking an apology for something she hasn’t even done yet.

243 April 14, 1860

“My love, if you can make it to the church we’ll be married at last, like I’ve always promised you.” His hands wrapping around yours, then devouring up to your wrists, finger on the pulse, checking. Marking the time left.

The smell of the sea haunts the room. Tang of brine and seaweed. The other invalids are in their lounging chairs in the garden no doubt. No one sits on the shoreline. No one keeps the ocean company.

Your body twists and turns without choice. The stabbing pain in your guts. Shift and it leaves and then returns and you shift again. Contortions against the sensation of your intestines shredding. And then your head craning to the side away from the bed like the nurses have asked you: obedient girl. Warm fluid lacerates up your throat, then dribbles from the side of your mouth. Relief just briefly after the vomiting finishes, a shivering collapse back against the pillow, quilts pulled over you by other hands. The faces of strangers study you.

You mark the days by when he chooses to visit, when he can bear seeing you. “When you’re strong enough to make it to the church, we’ll be married.”

Nobody has told him that the ocean is your enemy now, because they won’t allow you to visit it. Once it was all the space you couldn’t find in London, an unencumbered horizon for your eyes to devour. It will flood the road to the church if you try to leave. They say it stays behind the shoreline behaving itself, but it will all flow over if you try to leave this place.

Glacier cold needles of water penetrating your ankles till you can no longer walk, freezing the bones stiff. No one believes the ocean watches and waits.

244 You told them to tell John. If there was ever anyone who would want to save you it is him. And he would be all too eager for it, several years since you put a stopper in his flow of money to you. Guilty at the promises you made to him, paintings that remain unfinished, illustrations never completed and you told him no more, you couldn’t accept his patronage any longer. He wanted to keep supporting you, not trusting Dante. He must have pleaded with Dante to marry you, knowing the whole time it was useless. Well, you still won’t take his money even now, but he and only he has the power to bring Dante here. He can be trusted because his eyes are the colour of a rainy-day lake, not the ocean.

Lips form his name. You say it more than Dante’s now, though he has never been your lover, but always the watcher instead. The lone one who observed every barb of Dante ignoring your comments at dinners, the way he would praise other women. John, watching the two of you and always finding his way into your gaze with every wound from Dante. Your lips say his name when the strangers, the nurses have left. Cracked lips, skin ragged when you run your tongue over it and the taste of blood coming back with your tongue. Sometimes you pull your lips into your mouth, saw on the dry edges of loose flesh with your teeth, trying to wear away the chapping, but it only makes the bleeding worse.

“It’s at the bottom of High Street, the church. You’ve only to make it there. I could call a carriage even to make it easier. When you’re strong enough for the journey that’s where I’ll marry you. See this is the license here! I can afford it now, our happy ending. But you must live for it.”

In the blinks and snatches of sleep you dream of this church. The two of you stand there, up to the knees in the ocean surging through the front doors as you vomit vows out of your

245 mouths. The vows tasting of bile and blood smeared between your scaly lips. His vows are lists of the promises he’s broken but will keep now. The list has no end. His voice is urgent even as the water has risen to meet his mouth and distorts the words. You drown while you listen, head snapping forward and back, fighting like a hooked fish, chest twitching in confusion at the imbalance of water to air. Even as you begin blacking out you can still see his mouth moving and the bubble words coming out of it. He cannot drown. It would be impossible for him to drown with you.

246 May 23, 1860

Mrs. Spencer takes my hand as we approach St. Clement’s, “Look over at the tower there

Miss Siddal, the window at the very top, see it? Way back when a cannonball was lodged up there on the right side, that little round circle there, shot from a Dutch ship. They didn’t bother to get it out, no, only duplicated the effect on the left side. Little bit of Old Town, Hastings lore for you.”

She’s in a fine dress for the ceremony, a burgundy silk one with a bonnet to match. Even with her waddling gait and fleshy face she looks far more refined than I’ve ever seen her back at the health spa. It must not be a normal thing for her, this, attending the wedding of one of her patients. Dante was the one that asked both her and the nurse to come along to sign the documents for us. So kind of him, as if what I really want on my wedding day is two people who remind me of my illness.

The cannonball is a curious thing: a wound made art by mirroring it. Its penetration of the tower so neat. It ought to have cracked the stone, made the wall unstable and yet the stone claimed it instead. It’s reassuring, the way the place can take a blow and make it look as though a strike from a Dutch ship were just an unusual way of decorating the place.

We took a carriage here. Dante would hear of nothing else and Mrs. Spencer and the nurse swaddled me with layer upon layer of blankets, guided me out the doors and up the steps into the carriage. I should have made them wait a week longer, till I was strong enough that I could have protested it, but Dante was fretting, so as soon as I became more myself, and the food started to go down instead of coming up, we had it arranged. Guilt is a strong motivator for him,

247 for most things in his life really. If only it had been love instead that was bringing us to this church.

Once we arrived I tugged the blankets off, refused to get out unless I was allowed to leave them behind. So close now to his goal, Dante was easy to convince, which was fortunate because I don’t have the energy just now for a tantrum.

The church is dimly lit, two lit chandeliers and a few candles the only light. It’s afternoon so it makes sense that the church wouldn’t want to bother with lighting the lamps, but it’s as though the whole day has been perpetual dusk. The sun wants to rise, but the night is threatening back. Neither has won and so neither reign over the day yet.

The only thing I’ve ever really loved about churches is the stained glass windows, and perhaps the hymns. Everything else is long speeches of judgement and morality. The church is the reason why my parents wouldn’t have come today even if invited, why we hardly speak anymore in fact. The church is all too eager to remind me where I’ll be going after the way I’ve lived my life.

Mrs. Spencer and the nurse seat themselves in the front pew and the priest who’s agreed to marry us pads into the room. If it weren’t for the soft sound of his slippered feet slapping against the tiled floor it would look as though he glided over to us in those white robes of his.

Hastings, how the place has changed in meaning for me. The first time my parents sent me here it felt like a judgement, a banishment from London. The Brotherhood was there after all. And to be separated from them meant potentially that I’d be forgotten by them. Later, I learned how I could use the lack of distractions to my advantage. If I could draw Dante into coming for a visit, the solitude of Hastings would concentrate his attention on me. No rowdy

248 throngs of women and men pawing each other in the pleasure gardens, no alehouses loud with slurred songs to drown out our conversations. It was just the two of us and country silence on our walks out in the orchards surrounding the spa. The place a blank pastoral stage. And now is my ultimate performance.

When the priest joins our hands I grasp Dante’s like he’s pulling me from the ocean tide, a stretched out smile for him as though he’s revived me from my illness with his presence. So much of this morning was spent hiding the signs. He means our marriage to be the final curative for me and so this morning found me crushing geranium petals to my lips, streaking them across my sunken cheeks too. I’ve painted the figures of many women now, so careful as to make the colour of their skin right to make them live on the canvas. It was the first time I’d looked at myself in the mirror after months of being bedridden and it was as though whoever had begun painting me had quit, leaving me with the pallor of death. So it was up to me to tint myself back to the world of the living.

The words they say in church don’t carry much meaning to me. Not much rooted in the real world. Thinking that way must have grown in me as a result of the Pre-Raphaelite way of thinking; everything should sprout from the reality, from the truth of soil and sunlight and the imperfections the two of them nurture. I’m not sure the words even have much meaning for the priest. He must have said them time and time again as he’s doing now for us, this anonymous couple with only the two witnesses. He knows nothing of the nine years I’ve spent holding onto this man. His lips looks like pink earthworms wriggling beneath his wooly mess of a beard as he reads his script.

249 Annie, Ruth, Fanny. I want to interrupt this man’s long string of tiresome words. All I want to know is whether there is any power to these lines. Do they have the strength to keep these women away? I believed for so long, that if Dante and I could only find our way to one of these churches that it would settle him down. But every time I hinted at it, he’d grumble about his lack of tin when we both knew he had plenty of money to spend when the rest of the brothers would come round expecting wine and a bit to eat in our little hovel.

There is no sunlight to illuminate the stained glass window behind the priest, but the glowering afternoon sky is still bright enough to make the colours glow somewhat. The body of christ looks so exposed while those that love him, that crowd round, are gaudy in their clothing, the crimson and copper robes of some of the apostles. One of them, I don’t know enough about the image to put a name to him, but he stands in the background watching. His robe is green, that malevolent, glowing green. My mouth dry as I stare at the man in green and I think of pulling from Dante, of reaching my fingers up to the glass, of climbing anything, the altar even just so my fingers can reach that green glass. Can’t remember the last time I held that small curved bottle in hand, lifted it up to let a candle or a lantern glow through it, like catching a firefly in its depths. I’d imagine all that light inside when the bottle met my lips, left them without feeling for hours after.

The blue robe of the virgin Mary is what’s central to the image. Can’t think of what I no longer have. What they wouldn’t allow me to have anymore. They said I’d gotten out of control. That calming, delphinium blue surrounding the naked body of Christ. No wonder he’s so peaceful, that vivid indigo cloud of fabric surrounding him, complementing his golden halo so well.

250 There’s another Mary at his feet. Magdalene all in red. They may as well have given her my unlucky shade of hair; it’s clear how much the other figures in the image don’t wish for her to be there. Virgin Mary probably wouldn’t have even acknowledged her, and yet here she is on this church window. She was fortunate in her choice of men, picking a savior of all things. So many others like her wouldn’t have even the barest chance of making it into an image like that.

Clever girl, knowing which man to pick.

Dante squeezes my hand, inclines his head towards the priest and darts his eyes that direction as well. They’ve both been waiting for my response. Now is the time for mimicking whatever lines the priest gives me. I close my eyes a moment, focus on my chest as it swells and contracts. One deep breath and then I begin my parroting. Trying to put some meaning behind the words. The words are more prayer than anything I might have whispered under my breath in a church before. If I speak them with enough emotion, let them take on a weight deep within me, perhaps it will be enough. This is the lie I try to tell myself, when really I know that it is how

Dante has said them that matters most. But I missed listening to him, hypnotized by the stained glass panes and their dull smolder.

I’ve finished my parroting now. The priests speaks his final lines, the conclusion to a union. His hands covering ours, grip them firmly. I think of the vice back in my father’s workshop, like molars clamping tight on the handle of a knife, sparks zinging as he filed the blade sharp. When Dante kisses me his lips are cold and dry.

251 May 2, 1861

It was when you were sketching that you felt it. Or rather, felt the lack of it: her movement. For months her growing, and stretching you, little fists pushing out, tiny feet kicking the taut drum of your belly. That this unborn baby was a girl was something you gleaned from instinct. You dreamed of your daughter and her fight beneath layer after layer of skin and blood.

She needed to be strong to survive your frailty.

And then the stillness. An uneasiness nagging at you. Because sometimes she slept, but this was different.

You were sketching the window across from you, and all it framed: a glimpse of a tree, fine branches dipping in and out of view at the edge of the window sill like green fringed eyelashes in a slow wink. Maybe it happened before the sketching started. Could it have been felt, that last twitch and tremble of her body? It should be something a mother feels: the life leaving her daughter. But all sensation had been dulled for such a long time with that glass vial.

Dante never said anything, but he was restrained in his excitement when he first heard the news. You’d waited a few months to be sure, but no blood came and so you must be with child.

But he didn’t expect you could hold life in you this long. And then you passed by the predicted disaster, no miscarriage. And he was more at ease, found the doctor, the obstetrician, the live-in nurse. The nurse’s hands, although spotted with age, were agile and confident as she pressed them against your swelling belly, checking. You often watched these hands as they did their work, their coiling of blue veins pressing against the tissue paper of her skin. And then you’d study your own after, the veins visible, but not so defined as hers, and you’d wonder, what is it

252 about old age that makes the veins of our bodies push against the skin? Are they trying to escape the decay and the breakdown?

Now, you’re sitting on the high back rocking chair, the old battered one Dante found years ago in a shop. They’d asked very little for it and he re-painted it himself: a honey-gold varnish. The rocking is comforting to the twinge of cramps seizing your body.

Indigestion: the easy lie you told yourself at first, but the pain is the same as the pain of your monthly courses. What was a hint of ache is now a growing spasm and clenching. The nurse, Deirdre in the next room, you can hear her humming without rhythm or notes as she presses some of Dante’s shirts. You should call her, but you don’t. Sit there absorbing the cramping. Punishment for your inability to keep your fingers from pulling the glass stopper.

You waited a day before you told anyone the baby was gone. To be sure that it really wasn’t moving, or because you’d slipped into that easy silence of denial. You know why the baby stopped moving. A baby shouldn’t have to fight against the body of its own mother. The poison in your flesh slowly shutting down life.

Place your hands over the straining skin of your lower abdomen. Nobody ever told you what this felt like, not a proper thing for women to talk about. And even if they had told you, the level of agony, they at least had the hope of a child. You don’t have that hope. All the screaming, bathing in your own sweat, just to push out something to bury. If they don’t bury you along with it of course.

It’s been a month since the doctor confirmed, that, yes, she was gone. That your only hope was that your body would go into labour, push out the stillborn before it began to rot within you. He didn’t say these things to you of course, but to Dante in the next room. He might have

253 kept his voice lower. It would have been better to have been naive and trusting, a young woman who had no experience with men and their ways of manipulating.

His words made the dead thing inside you more real than it had been before. When you walked you did it slowly, trying not to let your body sway. That fear that, if you walked too fast, turned suddenly, that you would feel it within you. You’d feel it as if your womb had grown nerve endings, that slimy, fetid flesh nudging against your own. A reminder.

Where, early on in the pregnancy it was certain foods that put you off, their taste too sharp, or so altered that they were unpalatable, now, it was smell. The odor of it everywhere. It was an asphyxiating rank smell, oily and catching in your nostrils. Every day slipping by, the stronger the smell of rotting flesh. You asked him if he noticed it, but Dante couldn’t smell a thing.

At night you’d twitch awake from dreams of a bloated, rancid child within you. It floated, cloudy eyes open. It knew how many drops you took for the two of you. The dreams so vivid that sleep was quicksand and you wouldn’t be pulled under. At night you’d turn away from

Dante so he wouldn’t notice your open eyes. Your head feeling too bulky and heavy for your neck during the day, your grey eyes shrinking back into your skull with the insomnia. No longer the eyes of Dante’s dear dove, now eyes like stones in the bottom of the river bed. Heavy, bloodshot eyes crushing back into your own skull.

And Dante painted, and talked of his paintings, and the students he taught, and he brought in the oatmeal the maid had made. He would carry on his one-sided conversations happily enough as long as you didn’t speak of it. And if you did he knew his absence was punishment enough. How could you be so ungrateful when he was doing his best? Bringing breakfast in

254 bed, nattering gossip about a model who hadn’t worked out for William, or Johnny’s trouble with his landlord.

The cramps intensify. You hunched over in the chair that’s suddenly too hard for the sharp bones of your body. That ripping, ripple sensation at the very core of you. A fanciful notion that the corpse of her within is possessed now, has grown black dagger nails on the ends of her wrinkled, blue-grey fingers, that she’s trying to claw her way out of you. Grabbing bunches of your inner flesh in her angry infant fists.

“Deirdre. Deirdre!” Your body curls in on itself.

Her rosewater smell beside you, mixing with the stench of death, her dry, cool hand on your cheek. “It’s time then. I’ll fetch Elsie and we’ll move you to the bed. Be strong, girl.

Make them fingers into fists and squeeze.”

Her heels tap out her leaving. Your fingers follow her directions, nails cutting half- moons into your palms. Clenching and unclenching fists a way of tricking yourself into feeling in control.

Two sets of hands now, lifting you from the chair, supporting your hunched spine as your womb writhes in an angry mass. A moaning sound you only notice now is coming from you.

Sound of them stripping off the blankets till only the bottom sheet remains, then they cradle you up into their arms, stretch you out on the bed. Deirdre plumps pillows up behind your head, Elsie, eyes darting, fidgets at the far end of the room.

“Elsie, get us some hot water and rags why don’t you?” Deirdre says.

The cramps, the contractions deceptive. There’s a span of moments in which all pain vanishes, and then it comes back, tide-rushing over you, your toes lock, curled in their own

255 muscle spasm. You watch the veins on your legs stand out cerulean blue against your parchment paper skin.

Deirdre pulls up a chair and has her knitting with her of all things. “We still have a bit of a wait my girl, the contractions are still too far apart for anything to be happening quite yet, but soon.” The needles click, clack, slide in the silence and then the rolling pain and you make your fists again, clenching.

Elsie back with her pail of steaming water and some cloths. Her face dewy red with exertion making the whites of her eyes stand out like a panicked horse’s.

“Good girl,” Deirdre tells her. “Go back to your chores now and I’ll call if you’re needed. You listen though, mind, I’m not going to call twice. When I need you, you be here.

Understand?” Elsie gives a faint nod, vanishes from the room, towards the toilette. The toilette.

If you could just get there. . . Bear down as the pain rolls through again. That stream of drops hot on your tongue.

“Deirdre?” you say.

“Yes dear?”

“My laudanum, in the cabinet in the toilette. Might you get it for me?”

“Not necessary my dear. Every woman goes through this pain. You’ll just have to be strong.”

Temper your voice with weakness, with misery, “Deirdre, please. It’s more than I can bear.”

256 She lets her knitting slump into her lap with a sigh. Then she leaves to fetch it, you can hear her opening the cupboard, see it there in the middle shelf, glinting glass, waiting. She’s back at the bedside again, her fingers about to work the stopper out.

“No, no. Let me.” You hold your hand out, cringe as a contraction grips you then releases again. She places the bottle in your hand after it’s passed. Sits down again with her knitting, not wanting to see you at your habit.

The little vial of glass, that hard reassurance in your palm. Escape. Soften the clenching ache, wrap it with gauze. You pull the stopper, squeeze to gather its brown nectar. Tilt your head back and let a stream jet down the back of your tongue. Then you pull from the bottle three more times before you rest the vial on bedside table.

Roll back flat onto the pillow, eyes tracing the plaster of the ceiling. White, white ceiling. Never stained, always pure, even with all the smog and smoke. And then again, your whole body stiffening, tense with the intensity. Sweat rising from the pores, making you shiver.

And again. They’re coming closer now, but the body doesn’t seem to be yours anymore. Rather, you are just pausing here a moment, with this woman stretched out on the bed, you groaning, or her groaning, the sweat soaking into the mattress. Again, and your fingernails dig into the sheets, punishing them. Your thumb nail folding back on itself, not strong enough for the force, but the pain is dim in comparison with the glowing ember in your pelvis. Your body registering the pain now, more than you do. Making the sounds and the actions while your head sighs into that gauzy feeling.

That other woman rising from her chair now, stroking back your hair.

“Dante?” you say.

257 “He’s not here now. He’ll be at the college working. Better a man not be here. They don’t have the stomach for this, only get in the way.”

Excuses. Always excuses for him not being around. And her judging you for the laudanum. Telling you it’s not necessary as though this were a regular birth, as though a live baby will come out. So cold this woman. Cold bitch. Bitch unfeeling enough to pull a corpse from you and not understand. Saying you don’t need the laudanum.

She’s stripping you of your dress now, down to the petticoats. A shiver of shame. This woman’s hands touching like this. Humiliating. Grunting, bat at her hands, struggle away.

“Elsie! I need you now girl! Get up here!” her voice in panic. The other one coming in.

“She’s taken her laudanum again and she’s not manageable. You hold her down now while I finish stripping this dress off her. No sense ruining it with the birth.”

Elsie coming to your shoulders holding them down as the other slides the dress away.

“Now calm down Mrs. Rossetti, everything’s alright now. It’s Elsie, see?” You give a sigh. She can’t be blamed for this, only that other bitch woman. Elsie stroking your hair and humming a shaky tune through her chapped lips as the other woman is spreading your legs. Don’t think of it, her hands, what she’s exposing. Look at Elsie, blue eyes and pinched lips Elsie. Elsie humming half a song. You hear the other half in your own mind. The walls falling back behind her.

“It’s crowning,” a voice says. “Push, push!”

Humming, humming. Looking up at the ceiling, seeing the rust red snakes coiling along the plaster.

“Elsie, tell her she has to push.”

258 “Mrs. Rossetti, please try, please push.” And you listen, or your body does. Your ankles sharpening into spikes, driving down into the mattress you push with the hard rippling of the contractions. Lungs pushing out air, and still pushing, pushing even though there’s no air left.

“Breathe Mrs. Rossetti. Breathe. Watch me now, big breath in.” Elsie sucking in air to your left, and you follow. “Now let it out and push.” The air leaving with a groan. You can feel it, feel her. Stretching, stretching. Her head hot between your legs when you expected it to be cold. All of it so far away. This woman between legs miles away. You and Elsie up here in a chorus of breathing. Needles and knives of pain far, far away. The shoulders coming now.

Someone screaming. Your animal screamings. Hot and wet between your legs, like the skin is scalding, blistering, flesh peeling back before acid. A singeing sensation like new skin exposed before its time.

Breathe in. A weak whimper. Body falling slack. The snakes from the ceiling coiling around your arms, a strait-jacket. Rest, rest. Your eyes closing as the snakes constrict around your chest. Hours and hours of screaming and pushing. Rivers flowing down your sides, between your breasts. When you look down you swear it’s the colour of rust, this river of sweat.

The poison coming out through your body now. You’ll drown in it.

Two female voices calling from beyond the white stars of pain blossoming in your eyes.

“Come on Mrs. Rossetti. Almost there, almost. Push girl!” Almost there, that tiny, still body.

The fetid body half of it still trapped within you. That rotting flesh against your own, sliding against you. You can feel it tearing at you. Little fingers cutting into you on her exit. Revulsion.

And your whole body one clenched fist, angry taut muscles fighting. Pushing out of fear.

Wanting this thing away. Feet sliding across the sheets, gripping then sliding, then kicking with

259 the terror of it. Raw, red screams coming out of your throat. Every muscle at the core of you fighting.

And then release. Release. The feeling of hands pulling it free. The white constellation in your vision beginning to clear. Only enough so you see her. See it. Tiny, blue. Like in the dreams. Bloated. The smell of it real now. The smell haunting your nostrils for weeks now no longer a ghost but drowning the air around you.

And all the anger, the fear, the disgust for her vanishing when you see for a moment that her eyes are still closed. They were never open to what you did.

If only they’d let you hold her warm, wet weight in your arms. Her skin blooming back to rosy living, oxygen flooding veins and reviving flesh. Tiny curled baby fists opening, latching around your one finger. The wonder of their exquisite smallness. New skin that’s never felt the world.

Elsie and Deirdre accomplices. Binding the corpse in a white cloth. Wrapping it around and around, covering her face. You want to tell them she won’t be able to breathe that way. That they shouldn’t wrap it so tight, it will hurt her. If only your mouth could move to say these words. But your voice clawed its way out of you with the screaming. All that’s left is whispers.

Your whispers to yourself.

Memories of Emma’s little Arthur those weeks she had before he was gone. And nobody telling her it was the alcohol. You’re sure that’s what it was, but she was never forced to feel the guilt of it. She had those two weeks with him.

The lullabies you learned, hating singing until it had a purpose. The knitting, the stitching of baby clothes a waste. How long can you leave them sitting in the drawer before he

260 hates you for it? Or will he hate you instead for giving them to someone else more fit to be a mother.

As they carry her away, you notice for the first time the agony, in the distance, your body feeling beaten and the damp, stickiness of the blood on the sheets, clinging to your skin. Rust red. The serpents slithering from it, sinking their fangs into your ankles, cutting tendons, slicing arteries in your wrists. You welcome their feast on your body as you let your head back into the haze of white and distance.

261 February 13, 1862

You hold the bottle to the light first, sluice it from side to side and watch the dark fluid inside. Your medicine, the color of a wound just beginning to heal. The women won’t stop clawing. Memories of the women he paints. You always missing the moment when he poses them. How do his fingers wrap around their shoulders, position their arms? Is it different, the way he touches them? It must be, he isn’t afraid they’ll crumble in his fingers. He can squeeze them, just as they squeeze you now. Crushing you in memory, shredding skin. They clutch at your ribcage snapping it open, cracking the bones like the hard shells of nuts. Like she cracked nuts that night when he first saw her, tossing them at him from a table nearby, laughing. You overheard the men telling this story once. She with her fleshy hips and painted lips. You they prefer to be the half-dying one.

The stopper pulls loose with a “fwop,” releasing its suction hold on the bottle, revealing the long spike of the eyedropper. The glass by the sink echoed in the mirror. The glass for the dose. The water cuts the bitterness. You tilt the bottle, it dribbles from the lip of it, bleeding into the water, then you stir it with a teaspoon, or if too desperate, if there in’t enough time, with a finger. This is the portrait he should be painting, but he never will. The water so cold it makes your teeth ache.

Sometimes you don’t bother with the water when you want the bitter burn. That’s what you’ve opted for tonight. It’ll work faster then too. You take a sip, press it to the roof of your mouth, letting the sting transfer its venom there as well, your mouth pooling saliva. Then you swallow it back, retching a little at the harshness of it tearing down your throat.

262 He enters the doorway behind you, body hunched, “I thought I ought to apologize about earlier. I was a bit harsh. I just that think that — ”

“You think I should forget about last time. Forget her.” Think “her” and you think of the labour. The pushing, soft tissue tearing, sweat stinging your eyes. The rolling agony of the contractions. The ceiling above bursting into stars of pain between gasps of air sucked between clenched teeth. The anger after, the helpless rage of suffering for nothing. The body they pulled from between your legs puppet-limp. Bloody. No movement.

“I’m not asking for that. Only asking that you try to be more practical. It’s a common thing. The body’s way of eliminating those with deformities.”

And this one? The same maybe? Can’t bear it, to push out death again like that. A blank, bluish face when it should have been red and scrunched with the force of its first scream of life, but there was only silence. The midwife tried to be quick about it, but you had that one quick glance before they swaddled it entirely.

“Other women, don’t — ” He won’t say the words. “I’ve told you to talk to the others about it. The other wives. It’s a thing for women to help you with.”

“It hasn’t happened to them. They can’t know.”

“It’s been two years — ” His eyes catch the bottle in your hand, “Again?” He’s not really asking a question. And when it first began, when the dose seemed more necessary than before, he would grab it from your fingers, or he’d clench his hand around yours as you choked the throat of the bottle, squeezing until he crushed your fingers. Once the glass shattered in your fist, little shards embedded in your palm. The solution dripping down your wrists and stinging the gouges. Now he lets his body drape against the door frame, shoulder pressing hard against it,

263 eyes holding a silent conversation with the floor. He’s learned the importance of rehearsing his words because he only gets one chance to say them the way you need to hear them. “If you only listened now and then, the yelling wouldn’t be necessary. A woman ought to listen.”

You fumble a hairbrush from the drawer, fingers clumsy at first, then gripping the handle with more confidence. The bristles gnaw across your scalp, soothing, pulling his words away.

His reflection watches your fingers unweaving the tangles, “Only a few drops this time?” he asks.

“Of course.”

With a sigh he leaves the threshold and enters the room at last. Feeling more welcome now perhaps.

The woman in mirror pulls the brush through her hair again as the man wraps his arms around from behind her, reaches up and captures the hand with the brush. His hand on yours, gentle, trying to apologize for earlier. He brings his lips to your wrist. You twist and pull away from him, continue brushing, “I need to get ready.” Your hand pawing through another drawer, pulling out hairpins. They fall from your limp fingers to the floor.

He darts down to gather them, pauses with the clump of them in his hand and looks up at you, “Wear your hair down tonight won’t you?”

“They’ll look at me odd, people in the restaurant.”

“At least only pin half of it up then.” He stands, smoothing his fingers through your hair.

“We’ll be meeting Swinburne at La Sabloniere? Is that the plan?” you ask, running the harsh bristles of your brush over his hand so he’s forced to yank it away.

264 He answers as he walks away from you and back toward the bedroom, voice dropping its gentle tone, “Yes, and we leave at six. Don’t make us late again.”

You gather your hair in one hand, twist it hard in your palm till you can feel the tension.

Pull it up along the back of your skull and then double it back, drive in the hairpins, a latticework of them to support the structure.

The face in the mirror is too pale. Twist and pull at the cheeks, trying to force a blush into them. Your skin already starting to feel odd in your own fingers, like warm dough stretched across your cheekbone. Let your fingers drop though, because there have been times when you forgot it was your skin, when you pinched and twisted too hard and left bruises. Your cheeks looking even more death-like then.

You run your palm along the crown of your head, smoothing everything down. He wanted your hair loose and flowing, like some Camelot damsel, but you’ve slicked it down, pulled it into the shape of a helmet of war.

The bottle rests beside the sink, not yet returned to its shelf. There’s the numbness yes, the warm numbness that kills the ache in the stomach, but the world is too intact still. You can pin your hair however you want, and you’ll do so in order to hurt him, but you don’t want to see the look on his face. The glass so sweetly smooth on the soft pads of your fingers. Pull the stopper in a slow release so it makes no noise. Parting your lips, you can feel the cool air on your tongue as you draw a breath in and then raise the bottle. You lips tingle, vibrate almost. You rub your knuckles over them, not wanting the laudanum to stain them.

Maybe he’s been watching from the doorway and will flash back into the doorframe in the mirror. He’ll grab you roughly, take the bottle. There’ll be the light rush of air as it whips

265 down past your legs and ankles, shattering near your toes. Maybe you’ll step in the shards, right in the center of that perfect explosion of crystals. You could grind your heel down on them for revenge. But there’s the shuffle of him dressing in the next room. The bottle back on its shelf now, still intact.

The world begins expanding halfway down the hall; you have to pause to let it stretch out to its fullest. Wait until it stops before you can continue again. You put your trust on your hand against the wall, scraping it across the wallpaper until your fingers meet the doorframe of the bedroom. He’s no longer there, the room empty.

The green satin dress lays on the bed already. It’s important to know how to prepare ahead of time, to get those things ready that will give the most trouble later on. Before you figured this out, you could lose an hour standing before the closet, trying to decide. Simple matters of choice are harder, but the body at least knows its routine. The hands grab the dress, guide it over your breasts and down past your hips. Fingers reaching now behind you to fasten the buttons. Hard to feel some of them, even when you’ve clutched them between your fingers.

They dissolve away into the skin until you can’t feel them. You let go thinking you are holding nothing when really you have been. The last three always the hardest. He used to help you with them, but he’s gone.

Finished now, you let your fingers fall back to the wall again, leaning against it for a moment, head down. Waiting for the floor to settle back to smooth, without the rolling. The stairs to the front door take slow, cautious navigation, but you reach the bottom and out into the hazy, orange glow of the late afternoon outside.

266 Dante sits silent in the carriage. A quick glance as you pull the door open, then he looks away as you struggle to get in. The steps, they look flat and straight, but they bend and warp with your feet, the handle on the side oozing into your palm until you can’t tell if your fingers are wrapped around it, or are a part of it. A pause to let everything pull back to steady and then one last heave and you’re in and pulling the door closed behind you, collapsing against the side of it.

The carriage window is a cool embrace on your cheek and temple. Your face crushed against it, eye practically touching the glass. Through the lowest point of the window the blur of the cobblestone street smudging by and then as your eyes trace upwards to the walkways, the shuffling skirts, black, polished boots and they’re kicking their way through litter and bits of rubbish: broadsheets, wilted flowers, husks and squashed somethings from the fruit carts. All of it bulging and distorting through the glass. If the glass is telling the truth, the world is melting.

“You must look through the windows. Really closely. Really, really close. Your face right up beside them. The glass makes everything all odd.” The voice sounds muffled, like it comes from behind a heavy drape. You don’t realize it’s yours until you bring your fingers to your lips, find them moving.

“You’re talking nonsense again,” he says, you can just make out the bulk of him sitting across from you. His eyes are meeting some space above your right shoulder. You don’t see this of course, but feel it.

“Oh Gug,” you say, throwing out the pet name. “You only say that because you have no imagination. You just want to see everything as it should be, not as it could be.” You’ve lurched away from the window now, body drifting from there slowly towards him, leaning forward.

267 He makes no response. Who is this woman he looks at beyond your right shoulder? Is it

Annie, her hair arcing to frame her face like a golden fan. Or maybe it is the other. The one who threw the nut shells at him. Round, soft face. Hips for pushing out strong, healthy children. She is all plump curves, and life and you are all skeleton and pushing out tiny limp figures of death.

You’ve made your mark with the blood that stained the sheets.

Gug. You called him Gug and he won’t even meet your eyes for that. Gug. Gug.

Guggums. Your interchangeable name for each other. He’d whisper it, sketching you on the days when your body was too weak to move and you’d recline on a chair, reading or looking out the window. Sometimes you’d wake from a light doze to his chanting the name as he drew.

Your body too weak to escape his sketchpad.

Eyes back out the window and catching on the faces now. The faces are warped too: stretched and stretching. A cheek or an eye elongates as it pulls past this or that bulge in the glass. The eyes wide with paranoia. A cluster of women in grey raise their hands in gesticulation, fingers pulled long as well till they become talons, like the women of your dreams that slide their claw-nails into the weaknesses of your skin, peeling it away for their own bodies.

The women on the street reaching, reaching with those skeletal hands until their fingers pierce through the glass. The fingers are warm and greasy with sweat. They stroke your cheek first whispering, “What a stunner. What a beauty.” Their lullaby of praises hypnotize before they begin dissecting. One is using a single talon to slice off your lips to keep them for herself.

Another winds her fingers into your hair, yanking, gripping it like a weed she wants to rip from the soil, roots and all.

268 “Lizzie!” A voice from somewhere. “Lizzie, don’t fall asleep. We’ve only a few minutes until we arrive.”

One of the women has her face still pressed against the glass, the skin of her cracking lips spread in a yellow grimace. Her eyes have a thick spider-webbing of red veins and are bulging from her eye sockets.

“Hey! Look at me!” His fingers snapping in front of your face. So hard to break that gaze, your eyeballs lie heavy in their sockets, lids half-shuttered. It’s a slow roll, bringing your eyes over to his.

“You said only a few drops.” He never saw you take them. Never stayed to be sure. As soon as he crosses the threshold into the other room your body dissolves, replaced with other bodies, some of them distorted doubles of you without the red of your hair. Her body and her body and her body.

“It’s selfish when you do this. You knew we were meeting Algernon,” he says.

Easy to find his weak point, you don’t even need to be harsh with the words. In fact if you say them blandly without emotion, all the better, “You just want me to be invisible. You want something for your pictures, but I’m supposed to vanish after.”

“We ought to go home. You’re in no state for this. God only knows what you’ll ramble on about when we get there.”

The harsh cut of his words brings back life to the muscle, tendons pulling and snapping the body back to proper posture.

269 “I’m fine. Only dozed off a little. You over-react. I told you I only took the two drops.

And why would I lie when you’ve always been so honest to me?” You pull your lips back in a stiff smile, pressing them against your teeth.

His answer is an exhalation from between gritted teeth.

“We’re too close now. You won’t turn the carriage back, it would be a waste of your money and Algernon will miss my company if I’m not there.” You curl and uncurl your fingers in the depths of your satin skirts, kneading like a cat in the milk-bliss of its younger days.

Pleasure is knowing when you’ve got your way over him.

* * *

Algernon sits at the table waiting, his face with its sharp point of a nose downturned in consideration of the brandy he sluices about in his snifter. The last of the setting sun catches on the manic halo of his hair.

He looks up from the glass and spots you. “Lizzie! Lizzie! Oh, over here!” He wobbles frantically in his chair, beckoning.

You burst out laughing and dash over to him, wrapping an arm around him in a giggling half-hug. You can hear the drag of Dante’s steps as he trails behind after, but when he arrives at the table he is smiling in spite of himself. “What will I do with the pair of you?” he says.

You give Algernon another squeeze, his breath on your cheek has the thick caramel smell of brandy. There’s a tugging at your sleeve, pulling you from the intricate poetry of Algernon’s scent and the soft weave of his jacket.

Dante has pulled out a chair for you, his knuckles white with the force of his grip around its back. Sitting seems so dull, much better just to hover and slide between Dante and Algernon.

270 Resting at the elbow of one, chin on the table, or leaning against the shoulder of the other. The choice made depending on who takes your fancy more. Most likely it will be Algernon tonight.

Dante is wearing his polite, stiff body that will dissolve into a lethargic sulk across the table the more he drinks.

You drop into the chair with its straight, straight back. The chair makes you sit the way

Mama would want you to. You haven’t thought of it for a long time, the lessons she wanted to teach you. But it’s better to sit and give him a little of what he wants, you can use that against him after.

“And how is my little Northumbrian friend?” Dante asks, this question the teasing regular one between them.

“Absolutely splendid,” Algernon replies.

The two of them slip into conversation. First, an argument about what to select from the wine list. Then they start in on exhibits and Algernon’s work. They leave their customary pauses and this is where you’ll glide in: a witty jab and Algernon will giggle, a thoughtful comment and they will pause a moment to consider before your body dissolves back into the scenery, the clusters of people on the terrace outside. Wine glasses clinking, and a blaze of colour from the flowers ringing the outside edges of the place.

Their conversation has a rhythm, like you could tap out the meter of it. The moments are recreations of those last week, the month before. Exchange names, dates and places and they could be speaking the same scripts each night. All conversations are scripts now, not just here, but all words coming from mouths. You and Dante, the fights. You know your lines and his responses before they emerge.

271 The room around you pulls out to all horizons. Nothing exists for miles but this cluster of tables and chairs and the people occupying them. All the faces are the faces of couples. All of them in love. A hundred flirtations, waves of embarrassed laughter, a flood of blushes spreading across faces. Every hand holding another, fingers woven together, until this is the shape that human limbs must take: a hand on its own an oddity. The extended gripping of another’s fingers brings about such an intimate knowledge. The feel of that other person’s hand in yours. What does Dante’s hand feel like again? Is it soft and cool, or moist perhaps? Does he have rough skin that becomes abrasive against yours? Can you remember the calluses, if he has them, and the places they reside? One on a certain finger maybe?

He’s resting one hand on his wine glass. His thumb and finger encircle the stem. You reach forward to grasp the hand, sliding yours against the sticky surface of a table that’s known too many slopped drinks. No one has bothered to remove these residues from the parties before, and sticky rings pull at your skin as you slide across. The table stretching on and on, your movements barely seeming to span the distance, the black varnished table that keeps unravelling before the tips of your fingers. You get only half way before exhaustion sets in.

Food arrives at the table. Your fork and knife dissecting. Each piece of lettuce so spring- grass green on your tongue. The cod is heavy with butter and cream that coats your lips. You balance it on your tongue, the salty oil of it caught up in a river of saliva. It feels like it’s melting there, but when you press it to the roof of your tongue, the full mass of it is still present.

After the salmon, after the last of its taste has left your tongue, you feel surprisingly hollow. Each bite off your fork a phantom maybe.

272 Something has changed. The dull buzzing around you altered in its rhythms and volume.

A silence. Just at your table the patterns and repetitions of Dante and Algernon have stopped.

They both watch you. They’ve left a pause, but you have no memory of the words they were just using. You lost track of their presence at the table even. Expectation. They lean toward you in unison, waiting. Only now after the moment has had time to sink in does a blush begin its slow crawl from the base of your throat up towards the full of your face. The blood flowing slowly, having difficulty in pulling off the reaction.

They go back to the words and leave you mute. They’ll be polite, but your inclusion in the conversation is only a courtesy. You are the backdrop once more. The silence has become an ache in you, the memory of it, of your failure to comprehend and connect. It’s a dull pain between each rib. Familiar like a swollen lump from last week’s clumsiness, or the paper cut that announces itself in the bath. This dull pain is an old friend. It resurfaces every time Dante leaves, flooding up between the ridges of bone in your chest. That’s the time for the dose. The ache always beginning to dissipate in anticipation when you wrap your fingers around the cool glass of the bottle. You wrap your fingers around your tumbler of water in imitation of the ritual, but the ache remains.

The ache takes the words of the men and pulls out the distance they take to reach you.

Pulls and pulls until they are only broken echoes through a black tunnel.

The ache takes away the unimportant textures: the wood grain of the table, the divisions between the cobblestones below the table. Slowly it blurs the world more and more, the features of the men dissolving.

273 Only two things remain: the women and the glint of the glasses in their hands. Their features remain defined. Too clear really. That’s because they’re the faces from all the mirrors where you’ve ever searched for your face.

Every time the reflection is not quite yours, until even you are left wondering what it is you want to claim. What is the angle of your jaw line, the curve of your nostril? How accurate this image of the self?

The women all have pieces of you: freckles, arch of eyebrow, flash of red hair, the curve of shoulder. If they have taken everything, what are you? What remains?

The glint of their glasses, all of them holding out vials to you. The dose. The rust-red drops. The sting and burn and release. The world in slow expansion as it works through the blood, making the invisible visible. The ache lost in a tumult of noise and roiling thoughts. Your thoughts become their voices: whispering and murmuring together a veil of voices.

Your name. From the long tunnel of sounds far away your name is coming. And now it comes again:

“Lizzie!”

Head jolts, your eyes gape open, wet with tears and there’s the rush back of sound and texture, but the ache is still within you.

“I think it’s time we head home.” His sharp face sharper with shame as you look up to him standing to your right. “So sorry Algernon, you know she hasn’t been doing well lately.”

Algernon head bobbing, face still lost in the sea of everything.

“Come!” He pulls hard at your wrist, keeps pulling till you lurch from the chair.

Muscles won’t respond. Your body, in a slow thaw, begins to melt back to the floor, but now the

274 hard bar of his arm comes around your back, anchoring beneath your arm pits. And you pull away from the table, your feet trying to find where the ground meets them.

The screams of noise from the street tear into your ears, wild laughter and choruses of drunken singing. You can tell they’re singing words, but can’t make sense of them. Either they’ve lost the sense from their own slurring, or you with the slurring of the noise into your brain. The melody half-familiar though. And now he’s heaving you up. A plush velvet bench against your cheek. So soft, soft. Whump of the door closing. His weight shifting onto the seat beside you, he pulls your face from the softness, one arm locking you back to upright, to the posture of a proper lady. His hand: finger and thumb, frame your chin, then turn it towards him.

“You’ll regret this tomorrow,” he says. “You know the way it affects you. You’ll spend hours in the bathroom, you won’t be able to eat properly. There’ll be the stomach aches. Is that what you want?”

Your lips loose, language a tangle on your tongue. No words. No words. He drops your chin, it dangles, slack on your neck, rocking with the jostling movement of the carriage.

If only he had waited a moment more for the words to attach to all the wordless moments.

The way they smiled together. Her lips erasing yours in the portrait. Her nose eclipsing the brevity of yours. The smell of her on his fingers. The three women slowly claiming your body.

And then the blood and his absence when the blood came. When they wouldn’t let you look as they took it away. Hadn’t he even wanted to see? Wanted to know what she might have looked like had she lived? Absence. His only comment the next day was when you saw him throwing the bloodied sheets away. A comment through an action saying: forget. Let’s both forget. So you told everything through the rocking of the empty cradle. Friends coming by

275 believed in the performance, thought you were genuine, but it wasn’t for them. It was a message to him. But for weeks he avoided coming into that room where the cradle lay. Him sending the women to tell you how normal it was, all of these women having plenty of time, not realizing yours has probably already run out. This might have been the last chance. But no, then there was another, and he was so excited and hopeful, because he had forgotten.

“Gug,” you try to say, but it comes out more as a gurgle than the word. Still, he turns his head towards you. “It could be dead too,” you say, the words swollen on your tongue are hard to mouth and slip out mumbled together.

“Don’t try to talk, you’re not speaking with any sense. We’ll get you home. I’ll put you to bed and you’ll be better tomorrow and we’ll speak of this then. I’ll be the one administering your dose from now on, that’s for sure. You lie about it clearly.”

“You lie,” you mumble back.

“You said two drops! Only two drops! And what will Algernon think. Only two weeks ago you took too much and were almost as bad then too. You can’t do this any time we have some kind of disagreement. They’ll talk about it. They’ve probably been talking on it for awhile now, the spectacle you make of yourself.”

Unfair because the words are too fast and you can’t catch them and hold them and make him answer to their harshness. No defense from your mouth. And now his arm pulling you down and out of the carriage, rougher, tugging you to the door. The air colder now, clarity returning slightly.

“I should’ve known better,” he says, stabbing his key into the door. A violent yank and the door is open and he’s wrestling you up the stairs to the bedroom. He drops you on the bed.

276 “Next time, next time you won’t come. I won’t let you. You can swear all you like that you haven’t touched a drop, you can be as lucid as anything. I’ll go alone next time.”

Words start finding a way to surface now. “Alone? But I’m always — It’s the only time that — ” You’re curling up fetal on the bed, fingers massaging your throat to help the words come. Your throat so tight.

“Look at you for Christ’s sake!” he cries. “You were drooling on the table. And before that, completely vacant. And why? Because I yelled? A kind of punishment to me? You’re the one who’s made the fool of herself. And tonight, tonight you’ll scream and cry and mutter in your dreams again.” He’s digging for something in the room as he rants. Your fingers twitch, as if they could reach out to make him stop. He’s found what he’s been searching for, a bundle of his good brushes, he takes them up and heads for the door.

“I have to go. I have work, I have things at the college to attend to.”

“Please.” Your voice a whisper.

“You won’t even notice I’m gone. Another hour and you’ll be out cold. It’ll make no difference to you.” The thud, thud, thud, thud, thud as he descends the stairs, and the final bang of the door. Gone.

Gone, gone to her. So many nights of this. When he comes back with no paint on his hands. He’ll deny it, say that he took extra care to scrub his hands this time, but you know that’s not true. There’s always at least a little left. A dot of it on the underside of his pinky, a bit caught under his fingernails. He always forgets somewhere. And it could be any of them.

You’ve lost track which one holds his interest more now. You can’t say anything to him about it because you’re supposed to be ignorant of it. Women don’t see anything, don’t hear anything.

277 Why bother with any other words then? The performances are more powerful than the words.

The rocking of the cradle, the exaggeration of symptoms.

The dull ache is a throb now, gnawing at your guts, making you think of the glimmer of glass again: the dose. How long has it been? Enough time? Surely enough time. The throb and raw pain taking over.

You rise from the bed, bumping against walls, to the toilette. You make a loose, sloppy snatch at the bottle, still on the counter. Miss at first, but wrap your fingers around it the second time and bring it to your chest and press it there as you walk with it back to the bed.

A performance.

So much of bringing him back, of having that intimacy of the first year is in the performance.

Fear of your death made him claim you, marry you at last.

A performance.

Lying on the foot of your bed again you imagine the spectacle of it. You will need to take just enough. There will need to be a note and so you grab paper, the pen, a bottle of ink.

Tilt your head back and take the first three drops and dip the pen in the ink. Scratch the pen across the pillow. Black oozing into white. Paper. The paper, where is it?

The burning in your chest ignores the dose, but the next few will stifle it. Nine, you think. Nine is enough. You unconscious and the note. What he’ll see. Won’t know it’s a performance, that there was no intention to really go through with it. See it as a failed attempt.

The sickness doesn’t work on him anymore, but if it doesn’t seem enough to take your life, then you’ll show you have the power to.

278 Four.

Five.

Six.

The next three drops seem to sizzle on the tongue, catching the sensitive spots where the last three fell, and so not to turn back, not to change the mind as it catches onto the blood and begins stretching the world, you raise the bottle one last time:

Seven.

Eight.

Nine.

A choke on the last drops, the throat so tight like a fist gripping, but it’s enough. Enough to fool him. The women peering through the door believe you, believe in what you’ve done. Oh the joy on their faces for what’s to come. They crowd round the bed, smiling. They don’t know you’ve fooled them. The bed so vast their fingers can’t reach you. You smile back. You’ve tricked them with the way things can be stretched, expanded.

Oh but the note, the note. It needs a pin. Roll onto the floor and crawl over to the dresser, knowing your legs won’t support you now with the rush of it. Dig, dig, digging and now finally finding the little box of sewing needles. Pin it to the dress so he’s sure to see it. The pin a sliver you place between your lips and crawl, crawl, back to the bed. And now a heaving back up onto the bed, and slipping, and slipping and grabbing the covers now and pulling yourself up with those.

And the words now. Suck in a wheeze of air. Instructions. Pen into ink and words and pen into ink again and pen into ink. All the black, black lines and the dots. The message. Ink on

279 your fingers, wipe off ink onto your wrists. Smear the ink on the paper because it won’t dry in time. And now pinning. Difficult. The fingers numb, slow-moving, fumbling and dropping.

Picking it up again, and quickly now. And yes. There. Ready.

Lie back on the bed, the canopy above white. White like Johnny’s studio ceiling and now the branches of trees spreading across the white. Remember how you floated like Ophelia in the wide, wide river and you’re there again with the rush of the water, and the birds singing, and the song she sang that died on her lips as she drowned still hovering in the air about you, and the flowers floating past your fingers, tangled in your hair, tracing your collarbone.

But where did she begin? Ophelia? It began with wading into the river. Remember the weight of the water in your skirts. It began with finding the heaviest stone. Slimy, you fumble with it, fingers finding their grip around it. Pulling, pulling it to the shore. And then binding it to you, wrapping fabric around and around. Tying it fast. Round hard weight of it pressing against your gut and mixing with your fear and you retching. Yellow bile pouring out your lips, pooling to the side of you. Hot, foul and slimy on the side of your face. The last few times empty of purpose. No more coming now.

A moment of still. Praying the fabric won’t slip and drop the burden halfway through the act. The crawl to the water’s edge and one moment. You let yourself take in the last moment.

The birds making the air thrum with song, the sun too bright off the water. Then the roll into the current. The water stinging up your nose, the first mouthful of it screaming down the lungs. The change. The wanting the air again. Cold, cold in your chest and tightening and the fluid there, water oozing all through it. The convulsions. Your body fighting off the heavy weight of the stone, but it isn’t just the stone now it’s all their fingers, grabbing, pulling from the bed of river.

280 Spine arching like a fish, bucking. Flurry of bubbles the last of the air leaving. The moan- scream from your mouth. In fingers and toes the shake, the shudder. The white flashes through the water. Explosion in your brain. Teeth slamming against each other, a hard clinking in the cold, cold blue. The white, white, white of the ceiling.

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