Hilary Mantel - An Experiment in Love

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

Fourth Estate

An imprint of HarperCollins Publishers 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 O’Reilly 2010

PS™ is a trademark of HarperCollins Publishers 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. Eliot’s ‘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

For Gerald

Cover Page

Title Page An Experiment in Love Hilary Mantel

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

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 Slimmer’s Disease.

Julia’s 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 famine—uninterested, perhaps, for not everyone has large concerns—Julia 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 children’s 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 wouldn’t change her underwear for a man, so I doubt if she’d change her name.

The story beneath the picture said that Miss Simon had been ill for two years. Gossip, really; it’s surprising what the Telegraph will print. The megastar’s 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 wasn’t my fault; I wasn’t 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, “What’s dear today, give me two pounds, will you, and a slice of your best caviare on top? Oh, no, that’s 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 didn’t 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 colour’s just a rag-trade manipulation, because apart from prelates nobody would naturally choose it. Women have been caught too often; that’s why we don’t have purple now. Except, of course, purple prose.