The White Garden: A Novel of Virginia Woolf (12 page)

“The notebook was lent to me—but only in a manner of speaking.”

“Good. That’s settled, then. I’ve a car in Sotheby’s garage. We can be off in minutes.”

“You’re driving me back to Kent?” But what about Gray—the Connaught—all the unanswered questions…

Llewellyn turned at the edge of Jermyn Street. “I’d rather drive to Oxford, actually. The best Woolf expert in England is there. Will you come with me, Miss Bellamy?”

Another expert. Who might tell them, once and for all, that the notebook was nonsense. But she would have to risk it; she
had
to know.

“I think you’d better call me Jo,” she told him.

31 March 1941
Sissinghurst

“I MUST WRITE
SOMETHING
IN REPLY,” VITA PROTESTED this morning, when we had taken our tea and bread in the Priest’s House, with its trestle table and painted cupboard, its heavy drapes of velvet. Watery sunshine through the leaded windows, the dourness of Sunday gone like a passing thought. Vita’s Alsatian trotting across the barren steppe of the roses, narrow shoulders slumped in misery. There had been two of them once, hadn’t there? The loneliness of the left-behind
.

“To Vanessa, as well,” she persisted. “Did I mention I’ve also had The News from your sister, in this morning’s post?
—
You left a note for her, too, I presume?”

“I hoped she’d comfort Leonard. Tell him he did all he could, always.”

“Then you lied, dearest. The failure of a marriage is never one person’s fault.”

“I ought not to have married him.”

She laughed. “It’s a practice I can’t recommend to those who like having their own way!”

“Then why did
you
do it?”

She moved restlessly towards the window. “Good Lord—only think how Hadji and I live! In our separate spheres. I never go up to London if I can help it, unless it’s to talk about marriage for the BBC. He comes down on the odd week-end and digs the garden; we each have our studies where neither may enter; and the boys take care of themselves. That’s why I’m devoted to Hadji—he has never interfered in my splendid realm, but he adds to it immeasurably. Rather like a prime specimen tree set off to advantage by surrounding bed-fellows. What shall I tell them, your helpmeet and sister? That you’re alive and well and breakfasting somewhere near Cranbrook?”

“You’re lucky, Vita. You haven’t the hatred that spoils relationships. Or the need either.”

“I’m a cold fish, in other words?”

Vita, who will sit at my feet and allow me to brush her hair? Vita of the sensual eyes and drooping mouth? “Coldness… that’s a word for me, not you. I’m girlish, Leonard says. Inviolate
. Impenetrable
. When what he means is
cold
. Vanessa says it, too.”

“He tried, I suppose? Early on?”

I knew what she meant. The maidenhead. Impenetrable. My frantic anxiety those nights in France, the misery of his hands, our honeymoon, my every muscle flexed and fighting him
.

“I was such a coward, a sexual coward. Don’t you see,” I went on, “—what we desire in others is what we lack in ourselves? And end up resenting. Hating. I have hated Vanessa for her
children—even when poor Julian was killed, I envied her grief. Leonard—”

“Was
never
in love with his wife’s sister.”

“No. That was my crime. I fell in love with Clive.”

“Oh, darling—call it
wanting
, surely? Not love. An hysterical impulse. ‘
I must have what Vanessa has. I must have it
.’ Fairly typical of the age, I should think. And of sisters.”

I worried a bread crumb with my fingernail. Vita was lavish with butter; we never saw it in Rodmell unless Vita sent it; she kept cows. They would be dead soon if the Germans landed, stomachs bloated and hooves sticking straight up into the air. “To cast out and incorporate in a person of the opposite sex all that we miss in ourselves and desire in the universe and detest in humanity is a deep and universal instinct on the part of both men and of women.”

“You’re quoting somebody.”

“Myself. I wrote it ages ago.” I unfolded from the table, drifted towards the garden door. “Send whatever you think proper to Vanessa and Leonard. Condolence. Sympathy. Guilt-ridden regret.”

“You want me to pretend you’re dead?”

“Maybe I am. Haunting Sissinghurst. A pale shade in a paler garden.”

“You’re very cruel, you know.”

“I was taught to be.”

She said nothing as I went out. Not yet noon, and already Vita reaches for the sherry decanter
.

I STOOD AT THE GATE TO THE NORTH OF THE PRIEST’S HOUSE; there is a statue worth looking at, half visible from here. My arms wrapped in my cardigan. Shivering. The Little Virgin, Vita calls her. Cold as lead. Draperies swirl about her knees, coy, suggestive. She is not for touching. I wish to be dead to Leonard and Vanessa
.

The boy Jock was working in the garden—a barrow, hoe, tip
basket, secateurs. Whistling. Free of war or marriage. Thinking only of green. Morning, he said. Was it still morning? He tipped his cap. Brought up to do so, I suppose, by his mother at Knole
. Tip yer’ at to the lady, now, Jock, there’s a good boy.
And Vita hardly aware of them as she passed, trailing scarves and scent, her lambskin gloves clutched in one hand, bent on the car waiting in the drive
—

“Fine morning,” the boy said. Polite, but cautious
.

I suppose the morning was fine. Sunlight and cold. I hugged my cardigan tighter. The crabbed claws of my hands searched for warmth. I ought to have put on my coat. I did not want to go back inside and learn what Vita was writing to them
.

“You’ve a good deal to do here,” I said neutrally
.

“That I do, ma’am. But I was bred up to it,” he replied, leaning on his hoe. “It’s a garden worth the labour—not so grand as Knole, perhaps, but more human. Her ladyship understands the way things grow. I like to learn from her, when she can spare the time. It’s a good place—provided Jerry leaves it be.”

Jerry. Germans. The Home Guard at night
.

“Do you stand watch in the Tower?” I asked
.

He shook his head regretfully. “I’ve another year yet. Foolish, if you ask me. I’m old enough to do my bit.”

“You’re doing it here.”

He grinned—and with a jolt I was reminded of Thoby, the years at Cambridge, his rooms with Leonard, Vanessa and I in our white dresses, the Apostles, the boats on the River, Rupert Brooke swimming, his body a god’s but not for me; I swam like a swan with my head in the air, both of us writing poetry at that house on the riverbank. Thoby. Thoby. Who died too young and bequeathed his sisters to his friends…

“Ma’am,” the boy was saying. “Are you all right? You’ll catch your death of cold.”

He had abandoned the hoe and was standing before me, slightly taller than I, sturdy, a line of worry between those clear brown eyes
.
He almost, but not quite, reached a hand to my elbow. As he might have to his grandmother. I wanted him to touch me. I wanted Thoby’s hand on my arm
.

“I shall go in.”

“That’s right,” he said encouragingly. “You go in, now, ma’am. The dog will go with you; she needs the warm.”

He was talking about the Alsatian, I realised, who had fallen in a heap at my feet
.

“Not the same since that Martin went. It’s early days yet.”

“Martin?” I repeated
.

“T’other dog. Her la’ship had to put him down, a week or so since; attacked the neighbour’s prize hound.”

I touched the dog’s silky head; she thrust her nose into my palm
.

“Shot Martin herself, la’ship did. It fair went to her heart. That’s why I’m glad you’ve come, ma’am. She won’t take so much of that sherry, now you’re here.”

Vita would be appalled if she knew how much this boy sees. The trailing scarves, the scent, the lambskin gloves—and yet he penetrates to the core of iron, Orlando on the battlements, shooting her dogs and keeping tight hold of her bare bodkin against the German advance. Alone and depressed in the blackout night, her decanter uncorked in South Cottage, silent except for the drone of planes
.

The great ghostly barn owl flitting over the blackened garden
.

“Come along, then,” I said gently to the inconsolable dog, who gathered herself and followed me inside
.

“EVER BEEN TO OXFORD?” PETER LLEWELLYN ASKED as they forged west through London traffic toward the M40.

Jo was inclined to say:
I’ve never been anywhere
, but instead she settled for a shake of the head.

“It sometimes disappoints. People seem to expect an Austen film. Or
Brideshead
. When in fact Oxford is fairly urban. Americans like Cambridge better—it suits their idea of what an English university
should
look like.”

He was just making conversation, she realized; talking about anything rather than the quest that had propelled them from Sotheby’s front door. Already, Jo was regretting the impulse. She had completely abandoned Gray Westlake—who had flown six thousand miles solely to see her—and that complication, Gray in the solitary splendor of the Connaught, nagged at her. He was waiting. She should call. He was her
client, for God’s sake. He had said he was falling in love with her.
In love with her
. No. It made no sense.
Integrity
, Peter Llewellyn had said; a difficult word. How did you deal honestly with a client who wanted you, body and soul? Something had to be compromised. Your business, your heart, your whole life…

“—wonderful place not far from town,” Peter was murmuring. “You’ve heard of it, no doubt. Le Manoir aux Quat’ Saisons. Margaux and I took the cooking class with Raymond Blanc—”

Who was Margaux?

Who was Raymond Blanc?

She pulled her thoughts back to the car. Time enough in Oxford to let Gray know where she was. How long could this consultation take? She’d be back in London by dinnertime. At which point she’d simply tell him:
Gray, this will never work. I’m uncomfortable with the blend of business and pleasure.…
Her heart somersaulted with desire and regret. Was she insane, to be pushing a man like Gray Westlake away?

I’m not ready
. She didn’t think of herself as somebody who’d steal another woman’s life. And she would never want Alicia’s life, anyway. She wanted her own. But
Gray
—

“… she ought to be able to spare us an hour. Given what it might mean. For
her
career. As well as ours,” Llewellyn concluded.

He glanced at Jo expectantly, and his expression changed. “I say—are you all right?”

“I haven’t heard a word,” she told him truthfully. “You’d better start over.”

PETER, IT SEEMED, HAD STUDIED ENGLISH LITERATURE AT A college with the odd name of Maudlin.

“It’s spelled like the Fallen Woman in the Bible,” he explained, “but pronounced like a lapse in good taste.” From the offhand and apologetic way he described his years there, Jo concluded it was a great honor to have studied at Magdalen, and that he’d done uncommonly well. She detected, however, disappointment in Peter—that the best years of his life were behind him? That all his hard work and passion for words had ended in a desk at Sotheby’s? Books, he explained, weren’t what they used to be. Collections—the aristocratic hoard of rare first editions, lovingly bound in calf and tooled with gold, arranged on the polished shelves of spectacular libraries—were impossible for most individuals to maintain. They hadn’t the interest, Peter said. Books went to universities, or national libraries with climate-controlled, hermetically sealed chambers designed for the preservation of paper. New money, when it logged onto the bidding website at Sotheby’s, preferred to splurge on wine.