Serial Monogamy Read Online Free PDF Page B

relieved. “Can I ask what it is?”
    “I thought since we are reviving a nineteenth-century form that I would set the story in the nineteenth century.”
    “Love it. A Victorian story. Sounds good.”
    The food arrived and we ate for a bit before he seemed to realize he had not got what he wanted.
    “So, you say a Victorian story.”
    “No, you said that actually.”
    “But you did say that it would be set in the nineteenth century? You just said that.”
    “Yes. Nineteenth-century England, so that’s Victorian. And France too. There will be a few scenes in France.”
    “Great. So, France and England in the nineteenth century. So, um, what’s going to happen?”
    I took pity on him finally.
    “Well, it’s the Dickens bicentenary; the story will be one from Dickens’ own life.”
    “From his life?”
    “Yes.”
    “You mean the story of his life, an autobiography.”
    “No, not really a biography,” I said, trying to hide any note of condescension as I corrected him. “Just an episode from his life. An episode in which he played a role, but he’s not the protagonist.”
    “So Dickens appears as a character, but he is not the main character?”
    “That’s right. It will be about people around him.”
    “Good. Sounds great. Love it. Can you tell me a bit more?”
    “Why don’t you wait until you read it.”
    “Emmm…Okay. I know Bob settled the fee with your agent. He told me you’d agreed to a minimum of fifteen instalments.”
    “Yes, at least. I think it may take me more like twenty. I tend to underestimate how long anything is going to be, but once we get started, I can give you a final count.”
    “You’ll need to start soon, won’t you?” He sounded alarmed. “We were hoping to begin publishing before the end of the month. I mean, it’s 2012 now.”
    “Don’t worry. We’ll be fine. I’ve already written two instalments. I am just beginning a third.”

The Dickens Bicentenary Serial: Chapter 3
Staplehurst, Kent. June 9, 1865
    They sat on a grassy bank for several hours before another train was finally commandeered to take them in to London. In other circumstances it might have seemed a pleasant-enough spot to wait, a sunny bank overlooking a marsh-like riverbed alive with bird calls and butterflies on a June day, but their vigil felt only like a second nightmare after the horror of the accident itself. Half the train had fallen from the track into the low-lying land; behind their carriage, a jumble of others lay in a broken heap that looked as though some petulant child had smashed its train set. Various men, some railway employees, some passengers apparently, were busy extracting people, and the results had made a battlefield of the low land. Bodies, it was not clear whether dead or alive, lay on wooden planks that had been turned into makeshift stretchers. Cries of help could be heard from the tangle of metal and moans of pain from those who had beenbrought outside. Nelly noticed one man lying on the ground bleeding from a gash that ran the entire length of an exposed calf and another figure, its clothes so ripped and its face and head so covered in blood she was not sure whether it was a man or a woman. “Don’t look, Nelly; please, don’t look,” her mother whispered urgently, tugging at her arm—but try as she might to look away at the sky or the ground, she found she could not stop her eyes from returning to the scene.
    —
    So, she watched the men, at a distance of perhaps one hundred yards, as they busied themselves about the wreck like ants on an anthill, bringing up planks, lifting out bodies, in some instances even prying bits of twisted metal out of the way of their efforts. After perhaps half an hour of this, she noticed a woman lying on the ground with a man on his knees beside her—Nelly was not sure how long this couple had been there; perhaps the woman had been freshly removed from the wreck during one of the moments when Nelly had succeeded in following her