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Becoming
George
Sand
Ro s a l i n d Br ac k e n bu ry
Becoming
George
Sand
Ro s a l i n d Br ac k e n bu ry
rosalind brackenbury
becoming
george sand
a Novel
mariner books
h o u g h ton m i f f l i n h a rc o u rt
boston ne w york
In memory of Elisabeth
First U. S. edition
Copyright © 2009 Rosalind Brackenbury
all rights reserved
First published in Canada by Doubleday, 2009
For information about permission to reproduce selections from this book,
write to Permissions, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company,
215 Park Avenue South, New York, New York 10003.
www.hmhbooks.com
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Brackenbury, Rosalind.
Becoming George Sand / Rosalind Brackenbury. — 1st U.S. ed.
p. cm.
isbn 978-0-547-37054-5
1. Women teachers — Fiction. 2. Self-realization in women — Fiction.
3. Sand, George, 1804–1876 — Fiction. I. Title.
pr6052.r24b44 2011
823'.914 — dc22 2010002436
printed in the united states of america
doc 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
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Becoming George Sand
she has not yet quite thought of. Bookshops are places where
you can take your mind off waiting. Her hands hold the book
as if it were a passport, one gloved finger dividing pages.
She says vaguely, “I wonder if you have any George
Sand?”
The bookshop is a small independent one tucked away
in an alley at the back of Buccleuch Place, not the larger,
brighter, newly chained university bookshop where stu-
dents mostly go to order the books they are going to be
made to read. It specializes in French literature and books
in translation. You can get yesterday’s Le Monde here, and
even Libération. Maria sometimes wonders how it can keep
going, but then there are all the guidebooks too, and books
about how to buy houses in France, how to cook like a
French person, how to stay thin, and Peter Mayle.
“Oh, yes.” The woman seems relieved to be asked about
an actual book. “There ’s a course, isn’t there, the French
Romantics. I have some of the novels in stock, and the let-
ters to Musset. That’s all for now. But you know the big
new letters to Flaubert will be out soon? It’s being trans-
lated, I believe. Are you teaching Sand?”
“No, but I’m reading her. I’m thinking of writing about
her. I’d like to order the Flaubert letters, but I want them in
the original.”
“Right, well, I can do that.” The woman goes off to
look on the computer behind her desk, runs her eye up and
down the screen, her hand competent on the mouse. She
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She opens the front door with her own key and they both go
in, she leading the way. She picks up damp mail from the
inside mat, places it on the hall table; even now she has the
impulse to tidy things, even with him coming in close behind
her like a tall shadow in his dark coat, even with the burning
feeling she already has inside. The house is silent, with the
dense silence of having been empty of its occupants for sev-
eral hours. She feels it instantly, its moods and atmospheres.
There’s clutter in the hall, boots kicked off—Emily’s old
ones—too many coats hung on the back of the door, a sports
bag nobody has claimed. There’s still a faint smell of break-
fast, old toast and coffee. The cat comes running, wiping
herself around their legs. Edward left early this morning to
go to the Department, and the children are at school till late
afternoon, after which both of them are going to friends’
houses for tea. Edward has a meeting and will then play
squash, then bridge, with his friend Martin. She turns to
smile back at the man coming in after her, yes, come in, it’s
safe, it’s fine. They collide in the hall as she turns to shut the
door, he holds her arm, it’s all right, relax, we are here. The
house is their space for now, and they have time. It’s Friday,
their best day, their longest, freest, the day to which all others
bear no comparison. Friday, and she will soon have every-
thing she wants, it will all begin to happen again.
They have driven here in her car, so that his can stay
visible in the university car park, and hers, her five-year-
old Renault, parked outside her own house, will not arouse
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Becoming George Sand
loves this, and fears it. She doesn’t see what he fears, and if
she does, if she sees it sometimes in the too-quick way he
glances at himself in the mirror afterwards, the thoughtless
hurry with which he ties his shoes, one foot raised on to the
side table beside the bed, then the other, laces knotted and
tugged tight, she doesn’t register it, because there ’s nothing
to be afraid of now, is there, life has opened itself up com-
pletely and shown itself, there are no corners, nothing left
over, excluded, nothing to dread. Dread belongs to the
future, and together they have wiped out the future, they
have established themselves together, here, now, forever in
this present.
Of course, the hours pass as if clocks are being wound
faster and faster, and it’s soon time for him to look at his
watch, which he has taken off and laid beside hers on the
bed table; and outside the light has nearly gone, and if they
stay any longer they will be in danger of losing everything.
Beneath them the sheet is sticky and cooling, and she feels
herself soaked between the legs, and they get up to wash
each other in the second bathroom, where there is a big old
tub with huge taps, left from the last century, in which they
can both fit while the rush of hot water heats the cold white
depth of it, and there’s nothing of hers and Edward’s, just
some old bath salts and soaps that her mother left here last
time she came to stay, and an old sponge—whose?—to
squeeze water over each other’s shoulders and heads, in the
steam that rises. They wash each other, serious and careful,
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