Fordhook, Ealing
April 1833

Freedom. It’s something I think a good deal about. What makes a person free? What gives one person the right to exert any kind of direction over another? Why should a parent seek to control their own child with such overwhelming, unilateral dominance that the child’s every action is more or less predetermined? If they are acting out of love, out of genuine concern, does it make this control more justifiable?

This is the question that I ask myself, as Mr Hopkins takes me back to Fordhook in a borrowed carriage. The rain thrums aggressively on the roof; as we sit in embarrassed silence, I can practically hear the man’s thoughts, as uncomfortable as too-tight boots. What happened between this young lady and my son? Who was the instigator? What, oh what, will Lady Byron have to say? Several times, he clears his throat, reaching for words that never come. Rounding a bend, we roll onto the flat plain of the hilltop; if it wasn’t raining so heavily, we’d be able to see the metropolis below the trees, busy with its machineries, its engines, quite disinterested in whatever small, inconsequential drama might be taking place above it.

‘We are good people, you know,’ says Mr Hopkins, breaking the silence. His voice is very different to his son’s – coarser, lower. ‘We don’t want any scandal.’

At this, I look at him, levelling my gaze to his. ‘Are you thinking about my father?’ I say.

The question seems to jolt him; he opens his mouth, dumbly, like a herring. ‘I’m thinking about everyone,’ he says.

Part of me is angry. Two lovers have been forcibly separated, and all this man can think about is family reputation. Does he have no regard for the happiness of his own son? Could he and his wife not have supported our being together – rejoiced in it, even – rather than dispatching me back to Fordhook like a parcel that must post-haste be returned to its sender? Do they care nothing for the romance of our situation?

‘I would have gladly married him,’ I say.

‘That’s as may be, Miss Byron,’ he replies.

A vision swims into my imagination: we stand, James and I, in the Fordhook drawing room, before some designated officiant. We are demure; we are elated; our hands are, perhaps, just touching as we prepare to murmur our vows. Then the vision darkens and changes: the Fordhook drawing room vanishes, and in its place some unknown chapel appears. James is there – a little older, his hair a little darker, but otherwise no different – but now it is someone else by his side. She is un-Ada – tall and fair, perhaps, with an expression on her face of soft satisfaction. She has never visited a shed at midnight, and never will.

At the thought of James marrying someone else, a single tear wobbles down the side of my nose; I turn my face to the window, so that Hopkins Senior will not see it.

I am not present at whatever conversation takes place between James’ father and Mamma upon my return to Fordhook. I can only imagine that it is brief and perfunctory. Perhaps the Furies hover at the fringes, lending support to Mamma; or perhaps they don’t. I am expecting to be summoned to my mother, but it is Mamma who comes to find me, later, in the garden. The rain has stopped, although droplets are still pattering irregularly from the trees, the only sound in an otherwise still space.

‘I blame myself, Ada, more than I can say,’ she begins.

This startles me; whatever I was expecting (remonstrations, accusations, dire warnings of as-yet-unheeded consequences), it wasn’t this.

‘I have not been present enough,’ Mamma goes on. ‘I know that now. Even when you were a baby, you know... my own mother would tell me that I was going away too often, spending too much time in spa towns. She would tell me to come home, and I wanted to, Ada, but at the same time I just didn’t have much confidence in myself as a mother. Your grandmother and your nurses would do a better job than I would.’

It isn’t like Mamma to admit fault. She indicates to me that she wishes to walk around the rose garden, and I – rather grudgingly – fall into step beside her. She goes on: ‘Perhaps, in my efforts to ensure that you received the same thorough education that I myself received, I placed too many restrictions on you. Too many governesses, too many lessons.’

Thinking of the board that she made me lie on, unmoving, as a correction for inattention or poor work, I make a little sound at the back of my throat.

‘I should not have been surprised that you threw yourself into the arms of the first young man who took notice of you,’ says my mother. ‘I was your age once; I remember how it feels.’

I doubt this.

‘In coming home willingly, I do believe that you have understood the error of your ways. Ada, I want you to know that I... I do forgive you.’

The rose beds are rocky-looking and drenched; the rose bushes spike out like brittle webs at all sorts of angles. Briefly, I picture myself as a rose, thorns razored smooth, expertly pruned into submission. Then I cast the image aside; it is a dull one.

‘I believe that, if we all exercise great caution, no word will ever escape of this matter,’ says Mamma. She looks at me sideways. ‘You do understand, don’t you? No reference must ever be made to what has taken place with your tutor. I want no mention of him in your letters (certainly you will not be writing to him), and I shall make no mention of him in mine. If we can endeavour to forget his name entirely, so much the better.’

We have walked around the entire perimeter of the rose garden, and are back where we started. ‘Well, Ada? And what do you have to say?’

I wonder if she wants an apology; she sounds as though she does. And, in a way, I am sorry. What James and I did was wrong; there is no escaping the fact. If we had run away together, the outcry we’d have caused would have been barely imaginable. Especially given the fact that I am Byron’s daughter, and famous for it, whether I like it or not. But I am angry too, and the emotions serve to cancel one another out, as neat as a balanced equation. Mamma’s speech was a pretty one. But in making it she proved, once again, that what she really wants to do is to control me, and any stories that concern me, and any situations that involve me. For all that she claims to regret the amount of control she has exerted over me, the reasons underlying her actions are proof of the reverse.

‘I understand,’ I say at last, not very loudly.

She pouts, as though she expected something better, something more. Then she walks back towards the house, stepping quickly, holding her skirts a few inches above the wet ground. I watch, loving her and hating her at the same time and almost equally. Above the house, the clouds have the swirly look of chilled milk, and I stare at them furiously, willing them to drift apart into cottony puffs. If I stare for long enough, pouring into my gaze every morsel of intensity that I possess, could I summon a rainbow? I wait a minute, and a minute more, but no rainbow appears. Mamma is now a tidy dark-clad figure in the distance.

Another picture is growing in my mind: my father on his way to cross the Channel for the final time, the horses galloping so madly that it is all he can do to hold himself upright in the carriage. His creditors are at his heels. He leans back, eyes closed, exhausted by it all. He is not only escaping from those to whom he owes money. For a moment, he has a vision of my mother’s face: cold, drawn, effortlessly calculating... and he thinks to himself that he will soon be free of her and her infinite need for control. He laughs bitterly; his valet looks over, solicitous, but Byron doesn’t care to explain. Perhaps he thinks of me, his daughter – longingly, forlornly – before turning his thoughts once more to the journey ahead.

Staring at my mother’s retreating form, I say under my breath: ‘I understand why my father left you.’