The White Garden: A Novel of Virginia Woolf (8 page)

“Yes. And she’s careful never to mention her
own
name at all. Who would have been close enough to Vita Sackville-West in 1941 to arrive at Sissinghurst on the strength of a telegram, and be immediately welcome?”

“A lover, you mean? Vita took them in scores. Mostly women, though the odd man does come up.”

Jo turned the book in her hands. “Only one of them could write like this.”

Imogen stared at her, thinking. Like everybody who’d made Sissinghurst their world, she’d learned a lot about The Family along the way. It was impossible to sustain Vita’s garden without knowing about Vita herself. She was everywhere: in the roses, the heavy Bagatelle vases that dotted the landscape, the looming shadow of the tower. Imogen had read the biographies. Lord, she’d even read Vita’s poetry, which almost nobody bothered with now. What was Jo saying? A lover of Vita’s, who’d had the ability to
write?

“We should tell The Family,” she decided. “This might be valuable. If it really
is…”

“… a lost manuscript of Virginia Woolf’s?” Jo finished.

The two women stared at each other in silence. The American’s eyes had gone unfocused again, Imogen noticed, and her own mind was racing.
Virginia Woolf
. Vita’s friend and correspondent for two decades. Vita’s lover, until she moved on to everybody else. A manuscript of Virginia Woolf’s, however partial, abandoned in the tool shed with the mice and spiders? Which reminded her—

“So it’s not
Jack’s Book
written on the notebook label,” she attempted, “but
Jock?”

“I think so.”

“How did a gardener’s lad get his hands on this?” Imogen demanded. “Oh, Jo. It
can’t
be a Virginia Woolf—”

“Imogen,” she said hurriedly, gripping the notebook, “I know you’ve got to tell The Family. I know it’s terribly important. I know you owe me nothing—you’ve already done me several favors, and I’m very grateful. But if you could manage just
one more thing
—if you could give me twenty-four hours, to finish what’s here and learn what I can about my grandfather—it would mean everything. Everything,” she repeated.

Imogen glanced over Jo’s head, toward the oast houses.
Notes on the Making of a White Garden
. Which hadn’t existed when this journal was written. What in all that was holy did it mean? And why should she do anything for Jo Bellamy, who kept more to herself than she was willing to share? If it
was
a lost Woolf manuscript… and she, Imogen, was credited with the find… the publicity would be enormous. For Sissinghurst. For the gardener.

“Can’t you ask him? Your grandfather, I mean?”

“He’s dead. We found him hanged in the garage. The morning after he learned I was coming here.”

“Bloody for you.”

“I can’t shake the thought that I’m somehow responsible. That the news of this trip triggered his death. Do you see why I
have to know?”

Imogen shivered suddenly in the October sun; the American’s expression was too intense, too painful to bear.

“Twenty-four hours,” she relented. “No more. But then you bring that book back, understood? I’m jolly well not going to lose my place over you, Jo Bellamy.”

PETER LLEWELLYN WAS HALFWAY THROUGH HIS
PAIN au chocolat
that morning when she walked into the café.

He was late for the Group Meeting. He should have forgone his breakfast entirely; but he had no desire to listen to his Director, Marcus Symonds-Jones, summarize the results of a recent sale. He liked eating his
pain au chocolat
at his usual table in the house café, with a pot of Assam; and why provide Marcus with another opportunity to demonstrate Enlightened Management? Marcus was one of the new breed of directors at Sotheby’s UK; he had suffered through a four-day training course in New York last summer, and consequently assured his subordinates that they were All On One Team, Although Competition Among Equals was Quite in Order. Marcus had perfect teeth, which Peter found suspect. He hewed to an extreme of Savile Row tailoring, but affected a proletarian accent. Peter
judged him false from shell to core. Marcus was a rousing success at Sotheby’s, however; and the slight suspicion that he, Peter, was simply jealous of Marcus’s ease, made him vaguely uncomfortable, as when he’d once disturbed a fellow seventh-former wanking off in a neighboring stall. Peter averted his eyes from Marcus when the two came into contact; the Results meeting would be sheer torture, Peter twiddling a pencil between his thumbs as Marcus spoke roundly of Better Than Projected Earnings. Far wiser to finish his breakfast and get on with the appraisal of the Broadwell collection.

Later he grew accustomed to the tentative expression Jo Bellamy wore whenever she was far from a garden; but that morning, as she hesitated in the café doorway, Peter took in the corduroy jeans, the mud-spattered Merrells, and the tied-back hair and concluded that an American tourist had lost her way between the Oxford Street tube station and Thomas Pink’s on Jermyn. Sotheby’s clients tended to dress for New Bond Street; they were careful to betray their ability to meet their financial obligations, before they breached the doors of the auction house. Whereas this woman’s appearance suggested she was in search of cab fare home.

As Peter sank his teeth into his final bite of
pain au chocolat
, however, the stranger met his eyes and smiled. His throat constricted from sheer surprise, and he gagged. Spluttering, he half rose from his table as she hurried toward him.

“Mr. Llewellyn? Are you okay?”

“Fine,” Peter gasped, peering at her through his glasses. “But I’m afraid I don’t… that is, I’m not sure—”

“They told me I’d find you here,” she said. “Table in the corner, pastry and tea, blond hair and glasses. I’m Jo Bellamy. Would you have a moment to talk?”

Peter cleared his throat, released the death grip he’d fastened
on his napkin, and gestured toward the opposite seat. “Do sit down. Cissy sent you, I suppose?”

“Cissy?”

“Department coordinator.” He sketched vaguely at his necktie. “Pearls. Twin set.”

“How did you know?”

“The rest of the Department will be in a meeting. I’m playing truant.”

“I see.” She smiled again as she pulled out her chair, and absurdly, Peter’s heart raced. He ought to have drawn the chair
for
her. But perhaps Americans ignored such things. And he was too late, in any case.

“How may I help, Miss…?”

“Bellamy.” She slid a large leather shoulder bag to the floor. “I don’t really know. I’ve never done this before. I’m not… good at things like auction houses.” She glanced around the café apprehensively, as though an alarm might go off; the tentative look was back again.

“You’re at a breakfast table, not a preview,” he said dryly.

“Right.” She drew a breath. “I found something. Something that might be important. Only I don’t know. And it’s not even mine. In fact, I stole it.”

Peter’s eyebrows soared. It was not unknown for the more audacious of fences to approach the house with suspect goods; it was not unknown for fakes—art, jewelry, anything of value—to be passed off as original. But such tactics were rarely shouted out loud.

“Sorry?” he said.

“I’m not explaining this right.” She blushed and slid a hand over her hair, as though it helped her to think. “Cissy said you were a Manuscript Expert.”

“That’s a job title here,” Peter explained. “It means I sell
rare books. In your country, they’d probably call us Specialists.”

“Fine.” She dismissed job titles. “But can you figure out the identity of an author from just the handwriting? If the manuscript’s unsigned, I mean? And how would we
do
that?—Identify it as Virginia Woolf’s, say?—Or rule her out entirely?”

“Hang on.” Peter raised his thin hands above the table. “What in bloody hell are you on about?”

“This,” she replied, and withdrew a shabby notebook from her bag.

Peter did not immediately take it.
Woolf. She had said Virginia Woolf
.

“We could, in time, do all manner of things,” he said cautiously. “But what exactly are you
requesting?
A valuation? Manuscript analysis? Sale to the highest bidder?”

“Not that,” she said, alarmed. “I told you—this isn’t even mine.”

“Then any request for service should properly come from the owner. We’d require certain information, obviously, before we could entertain—”

“But I don’t
have
information. That’s why I’m here. I’ve got to find out if it was
her
. And I’m running out of time—”

Peter sat back in his café chair and glared at her. “Miss Bellamy, you’re not making a good deal of sense.”

“I found this notebook at Sissinghurst,” she said wearily. “And I think it was written by Virginia Woolf.”

She set the shabby volume on the white tablecloth between them.

Peter opened his mouth, closed it again. He adjusted his glasses. Then he skimmed the notebook cover with his fingers as lightly as though it were the face of a child.

“One doesn’t just
find
things in National Trust houses,” he
told her quietly. “Not after they’ve been open to the public for forty years.”

“It was in a tool shed with some stuff of the gardeners.”

“So?”

“The gardeners’ books weren’t turned over to the Trust per se. They were passed down. To the current head.”

Peter frowned at her suddenly. “To whom
does
this belong? The gardener? The Nicolson family?”

“It should belong to whoever wrote it, right? Or if… she’s dead… then, to whomever she gave the book…”

“Are you
attached
to Sissinghurst in an official capacity, Miss Bellamy?”

“Not at all.” There it was—the smile, impish and uncontrolled—and the worry drained immediately from her face. “I’m a gardener myself. But visiting, from the States. I should never have seen this.”

“Then why—”

“It’s a long story. Please.” She pushed the notebook toward him. “Could you just…
look
at it?”

He did not immediately answer her. Lifting his glasses slightly from the bridge of his nose, he peered intently at the binding. Cheap, medium-brown cotton over boards, the leaves glued rather than sewn. Size, roughly five inches by eight. A school copybook, perhaps of the last century. He lifted the cover, searching for a manufacturer’s imprint:
Gould & Tennyson, Liverpool
. He had been avoiding the handwriting itself, on the title page, from fear of disappointment—

Notes on the Making of a White Garden
.

It might just be Woolf’s, at first glance: the looping, hurried script, certain of the letters elided. It would have to be studied, of course. Compared with known samples. Analyzed—

He glanced at Jo Bellamy, who was looking from the notebook to his face with the eagerness of a puppy.

“Why Woolf?” he demanded. “Merely because she knew Lady Nicolson?”

“Because of the writing,” the American replied.

Peter snorted. “Are you going to tell me it’s haunting and lyrical?”

She shook her head. “It’s… insane, actually. Very difficult to understand, in places. I’m not even sure if it’s fiction or a diary.”

“Rather like most of Virginia Woolf, now that you mention it.”

“Exactly!”

They grinned at each other; then Peter’s smile faded.

Marcus Symonds-Jones was looming in all his sartorial glory in the café doorway. He wore his most sympathetic and sensitive look, the one reserved for particularly splendid clients; beside him stood Julian Browne, solicitor for the Broadwell family. Whose priceless collection of bound volumes Peter was supposed to be cataloging.

“Look,” he told the American as he rose hurriedly, “can you leave this with me for a bit? I’m afraid I’ve got several pressing engagements this morning, and it won’t be possible to—”

“What do you mean by ‘a bit’?” she countered. “I’ve only got a few hours. I’m returning to Kent this afternoon.”

“Fine.” Peter’s napkin drifted to the floor beside his chair; out of the corner of his eye, he could just make out Marcus and the Broadwell nightmare being led to a table at the far end of the room. The doorway was cleared for escape. “You’ve a mobile number, yes? You’ll leave it with Cissy? Know some shops to look into? The V&A, perhaps? Or—you’re a gardener! There’s always Kew!”

He was nearly out of the café by this time, notebook clutched in his hand; Jo Bellamy looked bewildered, the beginning
of alarm on her face. He read the signs—she ought to have got a receipt, what if he absconded with her treasure, which wasn’t even
hers
—but it was too late to reassure her; she would just have to take Peter Llewellyn, Manuscript Expert, and the hallowed Sotheby’s firm on faith. She would have to wait for his call.

He ducked into the loo conveniently positioned just off the café corridor, and with relief closed a stall door behind him. That made twice in one morning he’d avoided Symonds-Jones. His need for flight—the revulsion driving him from every room his Department Head entered—could hardly be healthy. But he’d experienced a sudden horror at the thought of Symonds-Jones fingering Jo Bellamy’s notebook. Symonds-Jones’s uncouth vowels pronouncing the elegant little title. Symonds-Jones drawing Jo Bellamy’s impish smile.
Absurd
. How had things come to such a pass?