An Experiment in Love
Hilary Mantel
Copyright
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the authors imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
Fourth Estate
An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd. 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF
www.harpercollins.co.uk
First published by Viking 1995
Published in paperback by Harper Perennial 2004
Published by Fourth Estate 2010
Copyright © Hilary Mantel 1995
PS section copyright © Sarah OReilly 2010
PS is a trademark of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd.
Hilary Mantel asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
The lines from T. S. Eliots Whispers of Immortality are reprinted from Collected Poems 1909-1962, 1974, by kind permission of Faber and Faber Ltd
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Source ISBN: 9780007172887
Ebook Edition © MAY 2010 ISBN: 9780007354924
Version: 2019-06-07
Dedication
For Gerald
Table of Contents
Cover Page
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
One
Two
Three
Four
Five
Six
Seven
Eight
Nine
Ten
Keep Reading
Praise
P.S.
About the Author
A Kind of Alchemy
Life at a Glance
A Writing Life
Read on
Have You Read?
Excerpt from Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel
About the Author
Also by the Author
About the Publisher
One
This morning in the newspaper I saw a picture of Julia. She was standing on the threshold of her house in High-gate, where she receives her patients: a tall woman, wrapped in some kind of Indian shawl. There was a blur where her face should be, and yet I noted the confident set of her arms, and I could imagine her expression: professionally watchful, maternal, with that broad cold smile which I have known since I was eleven years old. In the foreground, a skeletal teenaged child tottered towards her, from a limousine parked at the kerb: Miss Linzi Simon, well-loved family entertainer and junior megastar, victim of the Slimmers Disease.
Julias therapies, the publicity they have received, have made us aware that people at any age may decide to starve. Ladies of eighty-five see out their lives on tea; infants a few hours old turn their head from the bottle and push away the breast. Just as the people of Africa cannot be kept alive by the bags of grain we send them, so our own practitioners of starvation cannot be sustained by bottles and tubes. They must decide on nourishment, they must choose. Unable to cure famineuninterested, perhaps, for not everyone has large concernsJulia treats the children of the rich, whose malaise is tractable. No doubt her patients go to her to avoid the grim behaviourists in the private hospitals, where they take away the childrens toothbrushes and hairbrushes and clothes, and give them back in return for so many calories ingested. In this way, having broken their spirits, they salvage their flesh.
I found myself, this morning, staring so hard at the page that the print seemed to blur; as if somewhere in the fabric of the paper, somewhere in its weave, I might find a thread which would lead me through my life, from where I was then to where I am today. Psychotherapist Julia Lipcott, said the caption. Ah, still Lipcott, I said to myself. Although, of course, she might have married. As a girl she wouldnt change her underwear for a man, so I doubt if shed change her name.
The story beneath the picture said that Miss Simon had been ill for two years. Gossip, really; its surprising what the Telegraph will print. The megastars gaze was open, dazed, fish-like; as if she were being grappled suddenly towards dry land.
It was the year after Chappaquiddick, the year Julia and I first went away from home. All spring I had dreamt about the disaster, and remembered the dreams when I woke: the lung tissue and water, the floating hair and the sucking cold. In London that summer the temperatures shot into the mid-eighties, but at home the weather was as usual: rain most days, misty dawns over our dirty canal and cool damp evenings on the lawns of country pubs where we went with our boyfriends: sex later in the clammy, dewy dark. In June there was an election, and the Tories got in. It wasnt my fault; I wasnt old enough to vote.
In July there was a dock strike, and temporary short-ages of fresh food. The Minister of Agriculture appeared on the news and said, What housewives should do this week is shop around, buy those things which are cheaper.
When my mother heard this, she took off her slipper and threw it at the television set. It sailed over the top and landed at the back among the tangled flexes and cables. What does he think folk generally do? she asked. Go down to the market and say, Whats dear today, give me two pounds, will you, and a slice of your best caviare on top? Oh, no, thats not dear enough! Please keep the change.
My father creaked out of his chair and went to pick her slipper up. He handed it back: Prince Charming, he said, identifying himself.
My mother snorted, and forced her veiny foot back into the felt.
As soon as my exam results came through I started packing. I didnt have many clothes, and those I did lacked the fashionable fringes and mosaic patterns. The papers said that purple would be the dominant shade of the autumn. I was old enough to remember when it had been fashionable last time: how jaundiced it made women look, and how embarrassing it was for them when the craze fizzled out and they had its relics crowding their wardrobes. The colours just a rag-trade manipulation, because apart from prelates nobody would naturally choose it. Women have been caught too often; thats why we dont have purple now. Except, of course, purple prose.
Quick, before I forget itthe dazzle of the lights on the white tiles, the dismal moans and clatters from the darkness, less like trains than the calls of departing ships; the voice of the announcer over the tannoy. I took out of my pocket a map, folded to the right square, and looked at it as I had done many times on the journey; my heart lurched a little, and small fires of apprehension ran behind my ribs, little flames leaping along the bones. I was a child, and I had been nowhere until now.
I picked up my suitcase, which was dragging my arm out of its socket, and began to lurch forward with it through the early evening; crisp leaves were falling already in the London squares.
When I arrived at the Hall of Residence, a womanthe warden herselftook me upstairs in a lift. She had a bunch of keys. If you had left that (she meant my suitcase) there (she said, with a mysterious, impatient gesture) then the porter would have brought it up for you. As things were, she had to keep her finger on the OPEN button while I manoeuvred it out of the lift. I had to trail along behind her, dragging the suitcase like a deformed limb.
My room was to be on the third floor, known as C Floor. The woman led me along a wide corridor, parquet squeaking under her feet. She stopped by a door marked C3, rattled her bunch of keys and admitted us. Inside the door she consulted her list. Mac, mac, mac, she said. Miss McBain. There, pinned to her sheet before she flicked it over, I caught a glimpse of a photograph, the black-and-white photograph that the hall had requested. My mother had taken it in our backyard: I leant against red brick, like a person waiting for a firing squad. Perhaps my mother had never used a camera before. It had been a clear day, but in the photograph my features were wreathed in mist; my expression was shocked.
So, the woman said, you were at day school in, let me see, Lancashire? That was true. I was listed somewhere, tabulated, in the heart of this great dark building. At a turn in the corridor I had smelt soup. Lights blossomed out in another building across the street.
The woman flicked over her lists again. And there are two of your schoolmates coming along, is that correct, Miss Julianne Lipcott and She squinted at the paper, turning it slightly from the light as if that would remove some of the czs and the djs that rustled and shuffled in proximity, in a surname that I had known since I was four, and which was therefore no stranger to me than Smith or Jonesless, really. I pronounced it for her and said helpfully, We call her Karina.
Yes, I see. But which of you will share? We dont have rooms for three girls.
Dormitories, those would be. I tried to imagine us in a row in white beds, Carmel and Karina and Julianne: our hands folded in prayer.
Since youre here first youd better decide, the warden said. Whoever is left will be found another partner. She raised an eyebrow. Perhaps youd rather that be you? Perhaps you dont want to share with either of them?
I realized that a dubious, timid expression must have been growing on my face. Miss Lipcott, I said quickly. Miss Lipcott, please.
How did I dare? It was not so much that I wanted Juliannes company, or thought that she might want mine. She would be indifferent to it; if youd asked her who shed like for a room-mate, shed have said, Have you got any men? But what she would say if through my neglect or failure of nerve she found herself waking up every day in the same room as Karina?
The warden stepped over my suitcase, crossed the room and drew the curtains. They were grey curtains, with a darker grey stripe, matching the covers of the two single beds that stood foot to foot along one wall. She smiled at me, indicating the room, its wardrobe, wash-basin, two desks, two chairs. Youll have first choice then, wont you? She put into my hand a key; attached to it was a big wooden fob, with C3 written on it. Youll find it best to lock your door when you leave your room. Hand your key in at the front desk when you leave the building. She put her lists down on a desk, tapped them together and secured them with a snapping bulldog clip. May I take this opportunity, Miss McBain, to wish you every success in your university career? If you have any problems, queries, do come to see meat some mutually agreed hour, of course. The warden went out, closing the door quietly and leaving me to my life.
I rubbed my elbow. It felt disjointed, irretrievably strained. Should I be here? A vision came into my head of the home I had left, of the stuffy room, with the glowing electric coals, where I had performed the study, where I had formed the ambition, that had delivered me to this room. A horrible longing leapt up inside me: not the flames of apprehension, but something damper, a crawling flurry in my ribcage, like something leaping in a well. The suitcase lay across the doorway, at an angle and on its side. I stooped, crouching to apply a final effort to it, bracing my knees; as if they had been waiting for the aid of gravity, tears ran out of my eyes and made jagged patches on the sleeves of my new beige raincoat.
I straightened up and opened the wardrobe door. Six metal hangers clashed together on a rail. I took off my coat and hung it up. I felt that it had somehow been spoilt by my crying on it, as if salt water would take off the newness. I could not afford to spoil my clothes.
A clock struck, and as I had no watchI travelled without such normal equipmentI counted the strokes. I sat down on the bed nearest the window. It would be mine, and so would the bigger of the two desks, the better lit. It was more natural to me, and perhaps easier, to take the worse desk and bed, but I knew that Julianne would despise me for any show of self-sacrifice.