Vanessa and Her Sister (23 page)

I collected Mother’s jewellery from the bank at Virginia’s request when she wanted to take it with her and then returned it to the bank at Virginia’s request when she decided she did not. Clive hauled her favourite houseplants to Fitzroy Square in the rain. Sophie, Maud, and Sloper were over there every day for a week sorting out the lumpy furniture and damp kitchen. I went over most afternoons to harass the builders into finishing on time. The double windows reduce the noise enormously and were worth the extra week’s wait. Adrian was no help at all and just clucked about nervously. He was obviously dreading Fitzroy Square.

Now it is just Clive and me and Thoby here. He drifts about the house like a protective ghost.

18 June 1907—46 Gordon Square (beautiful summer day)

I looked at the calendar today and counted backward. Three weeks. But three weeks can mean anything, surely?

27 June 1907—46 Gordon Square (nine pm)

A month. I told Clive. He was startled. He recovered quickly and said all the best things, but he gripped my hands so tightly that I wonder if he meant them. Is that how it always is? Is that how husbands react?

When Clive asked me to marry him, I did not see it right away. Perhaps this is the same? The pieces pause and hover before they snap into place?

I do not feel different yet. No, that is not true. My body feels entirely the same, but now I feel that we are no longer a couple but a
family
.

Later

We stayed up talking, and then Clive gently nudged me towards bed. He was ginger and faint with me, not at all showing his usual roughhewn ardour. It was all wrong, and I asked him to please stop it. Clive looked at me, surprised and pleased and so relieved. He swept me upstairs to our room and slipped free of his cautious shell. And we became us again.

30 June 1907—46 Gordon Square

The doctor confirmed what I already knew. He gave me a long list of instructions:

Do wear a corset.

Don’t read too much.

Do smoke cigarettes.

Don’t cut my hair.

Do take omnibuses.

Don’t put my arms over my head.

Do sleep with the window shut.

Don’t eat too much.

The last should be easy to follow given the long list of foods I am
not
to eat. I must avoid: hot chocolate, sour foods, rabbit, cherries, ice cream, and salt. Very boring, but I am determined to follow the doctor’s advice meticulously. Clive is pleased that champagne is encouraged. I did not ask the doctor about sex. If it is prohibited, I don’t want to know.

1 July 1907—46 Gordon Square

We received our friends in our bedroom today. Shocking, ain’t it? We were having the loveliest, rainiest summer afternoon tucked into bed
when we heard the barbarians rattle our gate. Sloper tried to tell them that Mrs Bell was not at home, but that never works any more, and Virginia, Duncan, Maynard, and Lytton trooped in. I started to get up, but Clive stopped me. “If they want to come and visit without an invitation, then they get what they deserve,” he said, pulling me back into bed.

They left after ten minutes, and we went back to talking about baby names.

Later (after midnight, can’t sleep)

I lay awake thinking about this afternoon. Spooling my thoughts like thread. It was the determined,
possessive
way Clive set out to shock our friends today. As though he wanted everyone to know that I am his, that we share a bed. Clive is territorial when I least expect it. A few weeks ago, at a Thursday evening in Fitzroy Square, Clive overheard Henry Lamb drunkenly flirting with me. When I asked him about it, he laughed and was not bothered in the least. “Henry is not the threat,” he said breezily. “Why should I mind?”

If Henry is not the threat, then who is?

PART THREE

V
ANESSA
B
ELL

· ·

1908–1909

“Have you ever noticed that there are people who do things which are most indelicate, and yet at the same time—beautiful?”

(
E. M. FORSTER
)

JULIAN HEWARD BELL

Wednesday 5 February 1908—46 Gordon Square (late)

N
ow we are three. Exhausted. It was bone on bone getting him out. Why did no one tell me?

But now he is here, and I can’t imagine a world without him. The name came instantly. When I met him, I knew. I would know him anywhere:
Julian
.

“Yes,” Clive said. “Julian. Julian Bell.”

And
—born on a Tuesday. The things that shake my life happen on Tuesdays.

8 February 1908—46 Gordon Square

Visitors today:

“Not Thoby?” Snow asked, pulling the soft white blanket back to see our son’s squashed red face.

“Thoby’s first name
was
Julian,” Clive said, reaching for our tiny son’s curled egg-cup hand.

Wednesday 4 March 1908—46 Gordon Square (icy—not that I go outside)

Julian has been with us a month today. I get distracted by the miniature, perfectly developed beauty of him. He has soft fleshy pads around his wrists, dimpled knees, and fat, stubby arms that reach out and dissolve me into small pure particles. I did not expect it. I did not think I had rooms enough in me for this kind of love. I was wrong. Quite, quite wrong.

I found the violence of the whole thing deeply shocking. First the great tearing away of having him and then the huge roar of ferocious love that swept through my ragged senses. I awoke a lioness.

A lioness now, but my God was I a whale. That is not an exaggeration. I was a large blue-veined whale. For the last four months, Virginia refused to comment upon my size, appetite, or the impending event. She would crumple her nose in distaste when I waddled across a room. I admit, I exaggerated to gain a reaction. Virginia has always been appalled by any human—or worse, female—function, the most offensive being pregnancy. To make my condition palatable and put it within an acceptable context, she kept referencing various resplendent Greek and Roman fertility goddesses when she spoke to me or of me. She still does it even though I gave birth a month ago. I find it wearing. She also referred to unborn Julian as a parasite that was draining me of my Nessa-ness. Very crass.

But since he arrived, Virginia has been friendly enough to Julian. She announced this morning that she has decided to love him. As if the jury
have been deliberating and have returned with a verdict. “I shall love your barbarian angel dearly. I shall lean over his cradle and bestow one hundred kisses like a great, good fairy.”

I suppose, with his huge appetite and atrocious table manners, he is a barbarian. It is the
idea
of Julian that really bothers her. The fact that there may be someone I love more than her.

Later

Clive just left. He is unsure and tender and anxious for life to return to normal. He surprised me and was wonderful throughout the nine months, professing to find me “fertile and Rubenesque.” Bless his dishonest soul. But now he is having some trouble adjusting to fatherhood. In the beginning he was reluctant even to hold the baby. “I may drop him” was his only defence. He clearly believes that babies fall squarely into the female sphere. But this week he has held the baby twice (both times when Julian was asleep), and that is better than nothing. Virginia goes on about my soft, placid nature, the nobility of motherhood, and how some women are just
born
to it—like a cow meant for breeding. All meant as a dig at me.

As of today, my customary month of convalescence at home is over, and I am to rejoin the wide social world. I know Clive expects it and is looking forward to having me with him in the evenings. And so, supper tonight at Fitzroy Square with Virginia, Lytton, and Adrian. I must keep from mentioning the baby. It only sets Virginia off.

And
—Clive has slept down the hall all this week as he cannot sleep through Julian’s crying in the next room. I miss his weight in the bed but cannot bear to move Julian farther away.

10 March 1908—46 Gordon Square (raining hard)

After a few false starts, we have formed a new group: The Play Reading Society. It will be good to speak of grown-up things. We actually formed it in December but were interrupted by Julian’s birth. So far I have loved
The Relapse
and disliked Milton. Much depends on the reader. Adrian and Lytton are wonderful, but Virginia gets very nasal and takes too many long pauses.

I suggested to Clive that we start with the raciest plays first, just to get any inevitable, squirmy, anatomical awkwardness out of the way, and he has repeated it to
everyone.
Lytton was delighted and promptly began to use the word semen around me as often as he could. I trumped him by swearing bugger when I spilt the sugar. I am liking the role of a risqué married woman.

And
—Clive held the baby for twenty minutes this afternoon, until Julian began to cry, and he quickly handed him to the nurse.

Later

Lytton dropped by this evening. The conversation turned to sex, as it often has lately. In flat, medical, and gloriously unpretty words, we talked about copulation. My marriage to Clive and the incontrovertible proof of Julian have gained me admittance to the room. Lytton is full of graphic stories and rude details, and he is always having sex with someone we know, so that makes it especially interesting. He reports back about this person’s excessive furriness or that person’s foul breath. We sit up late and say wild, inappropriate things. Clive finds it hilarious and joins in with relish (he always has questions about the mechanics of sex between men), but Virginia grows uncomfortable and often asks Adrian (who is much more adept at such talk than I would have predicted) to take her home.

And
—Clive only touches the baby when people are watching. When we are alone at home, he does not go into the little nursery next to our bedroom. It means that our paths rarely cross, as I never want to be where Julian is not. So be it. Clive will come in when he is ready. For now, he is mourning the loss of our two-ish life. I am impatient when I should not be, but I do not have time to manage Clive now. He is a grown man and ought to manage himself.

15 March 1908—46 Gordon Square (wet and cold)

“He sucks like the very devil, Nessa. How can you stand it? Don’t you want him to get some backbone and go and find his own food?” Virginia had insisted on following me to the nursery. I do not know why, as seeing me feed Julian repels her.