In Bed With Lord Byron

we sat down to eat
he said, ‘Lucy, you must tell us what the matter is, and if we can help in any way.’
    ‘I’m a lost soul, Keats,’ I said miserably. ‘I’ve lost my way. I feel as though I’m in a dream and can’t find my way back to the real world.’
    I feared my riddles would confuse him, but Keats looked thoughtful.
    ‘Think of Eden,’ he said. ‘Adam woke from his dream and found it true. If you imagine what you are looking for, perhaps you will find reality. Remember the power of the
imagination.’
    ‘Maybe you’re right,’ I said, pondering. ‘Maybe I just need to return to the original place – yes, that might be it – the place where I lost my way . . .
where I lost my most precious thing . . .’
    Charles Brown listened to all of this in deep confusion.
    ‘If you lost a necklace, Lucy, may I suggest we pay a visit to the local police station this afternoon? Someone may have handed it in.’
    After lunch, Keats went into the garden to write. Lost in his poetry, all the tension in his haggard face smoothed out and he looked serene. Charles sighed behind me.
    ‘He’s terribly depressed, you know. He wants to earn his living as a poet, but he can’t pay his bills . . .’
    ‘Really?’ How weird to think his poems were being read in classrooms, and here he was worrying about paying his rent.
    ‘His trouble,’ said Charles, frowning, ‘is that he’s so sensitive. Byron’s savage public remarks have hurt him deeply; his health is suffering.’
    I recalled how Shelley thought that Keats had died of a burst blood vessel caused by reading a savage attack on
Endymion
in the
Quarterly Review.
I did feel sorry for him. Keats
was the ultimate new man. He would have thrived in 2005, but back in 1813 he had to make do with being sneered at by Byron for being in touch with his feelings and his girlie poetry. Byron, I
thought sniffily, could learn a lot from him.
    I took a walk in the garden. Not wanting to disturb Keats, I wandered through the flowers, sniffing in their delicate scents, but he called me over.
    ‘What are you writing?’ I asked.
    He blushed and covered his pad with a curved hand, like an embarrassed schoolboy.
    ‘It’s just a little something . . . it’s called
Ode to a Nightingale
. . . it’s not very good . . .’
    ‘No, I’m sure it will be great,’ I beamed. Inside, my heart was doing a loop-the-loop. Wow. What a story to dine out on. ‘Hey,’ I joked lightly, ‘why choose a
nightingale? I mean, you know, everyone has written about the sweetness of nightingales. Why don’t you write about a pigeon? I always feel sorry for them, I feel they’re very
underrated.’
    Now if I’d been teasing Byron, he would have thumped or kissed me by now, then patted me on the bottom and told me to go on my way and leave the genius in peace. But I had forgotten that
this was Keats, fragile, sensitive Keats.
    ‘Oh!’ He was quite pink. ‘Oh!’ he mumbled. ‘Yes, now I listen to the song of the nightingale, I fear that you are right! The nightingale has been penned to
death!’
    ‘Ah – no!’ I said hastily. ‘I was just kidding, I mean . . .’
    To my horror, however, when I looked over his shoulder, he had put a large scrawl through
Nightingale
and instead written
Pigeon
.
    He cleared his throat delicately and I realised I was, literally, breathing down his neck.
    ‘I’ll leave you to it,’ I said quietly, wandering back indoors thinking in horror, shit, what have I done? Still, I thought, look on the bright side. Maybe people will stop
tormenting pigeons. Maybe I will come back and find people keeping them as pets. Even so, I felt quite anxious. Who knows how many ripples I might have created? What if the future now fell a
different way, like a row of dominoes, wiping out both history and my individual fate? What if I’d never met Anthony? What if I’d never been
born
?
    Suddenly a wave of panic swept over me. I had to get back to 2005 before I ruined history for good, not to mention my love life.
    I begged Charles to lend me his carriage and I kissed him and Keats a flustered goodbye, promising I would drop by for tea in a week’s time. Throughout the journey, I picked nervously at
the hem of my ballgown. Oh God, I prayed, please let this work; if this doesn’t work, then nothing will. Please, please don’t let me be stuck here for ever.
    I was dropped off in the very street I had arrived in. It was now busy with horses and carriages,