Vanessa and Her Sister (24 page)

“It won’t be for much longer,” I said, calming her.

“Just as long as there is some Nessa left for me when the little monster has finished,” Virginia said.

It is true. I cannot nurse for much longer. My milk is drying up. Probably best. Virginia and Clive, initially tolerant of my outlandish desire to feed my own baby, are running out of patience. My life happens
in three-hour instalments, and it drives them mad. I cannot go out to supper
and
the opera as it is longer than three hours. I
can
go to supper in Bloomsbury but
not
in Chelsea as it takes too long to get back. I refused an invitation for a Saturday to Monday at Desmond and Molly’s the other day as I did not want to leave Julian. I can see how it is trying for them. There is talk of a Stephen and Bell family holiday in Cornwall this spring, so we will have plenty of time together then.

And
—I feel the much-put-off visit to Clive’s family in Wiltshire is imminent. So far I have pleaded cold weather. I am dreading it. It will be ghastly.

16 March 1908—46 Gordon Square

On Tuesdays, Virginia and Adrian are taking German lessons with a Miss Daniels. I thought they would call her “Fräulein,” but apparently she is from Surrey. I wish I could get more enthusiastic about that language, but the inborn gruffness of it does not sit well with me. Virginia occasionally practises her irregular verbs on Julian, and I wish she wouldn’t, as it alarms him. But at least she and Adrian can talk about Goethe and Rilke. It is good for them to do something together.

Later

Just home from supper at Fitzroy Square. I did not think it was possible, but they seem to be keeping an even more informal house than ours. Virginia never dresses in the evening any more, and the house is thick with cigarette smoke. Wombat is not house-trained and “performs” all over the carpet.
Messy
.

Supper was not served until nine, and then, inexplicably, it turned out to be herrings and melon. Walter Headlam read aloud to Virginia from his new translation of Aeschylus, Lytton has a cold and drank cough mixture under a blanket, and Henry Lamb arrived with green oil paint in his hair. Desmond appeared after midnight and was hungry, so Adrian brought him scrambled eggs in the drawing room.

Tuesday 17 March 1908—46 Gordon Square

Elsie the new nurse started today. She was a great success with Julian and very firm with me. Her meaty forearms are straight out of Dickens. Clive insisted we hire her. He says he wants me to have time to paint. “It is time to get back to our normal life, Nessa,” he keeps telling me. “But this
is
our normal life now,” I answer.

Saturday 21 March 1908—46 Gordon Square (four pm already)

Tonight we are giving our first party since Julian. I am behind and distracted. I have still not spoken to Sophie about the sandwiches nor to Maud about the drawing room. It has not been used in weeks, and needs a good going-over.

Even later (one am)

I was terrified we would wake the baby. But he was two floors up, and Clive was right, he slept right through it. We played the gramophone and
danced
. The Grizzly Bear, the Turkey Trot, and the Bunny Hug. Even Lytton got up out of his chair and stomped and growled and grizzled and clucked. Saxon wanted to dance the old-fashioned Irene Skipping Rope but we said no.

And
—London is dismal in March, and Clive thinks we need a change. There has been more discussion of taking a holiday in Cornwall. I suggested St. Keverne or St. Mawes or even Polperro, but Virginia wants St. Ives. St. Ives without Thoby.

22 March 1908

Kandy, Ceylon

Lytton
,

Julian. For the Goth? Good. Not that he will be likely to have much of the Goth about him. I am sure this baby will soon be saturated with Clive’s aggressively Francophile bonhomie and by next year will be able to choose wine, discuss art, and speak French better than either of us.

I am not surprised Adrian is a talented reader. He was always quietly theatrical. I also imagine Virginia can easily hold an audience. I remember her low musical voice. Does Saxon actually read aloud? Difficult to picture.

Yours
,  

Leonard

HRH KING EDWARD VII POSTAL STATIONERY

Monday 30 March 1908—46 Gordon Square

Just back from 29 Fitzroy Square. Adrian and Virginia are not a natural domestic fit. The atmosphere is not breezy and comfortable but rather tight and unsaid, and the air around Virginia crackles with irritation. Poor Adrian. I wish they would find someone else to move in to cut the tension.

Elsie had a toothache so I left her here and took Julian to visit Virginia. It was awful. I held him and rocked him and bounced him, but he still fussed, and Virginia soon adopted a martyred expression. I walked
him in slow blunt squares around the room. Virginia said I was making her dizzy. Fortunately Clive called in for me and told Virginia amusing stories that gave her the opportunity to make witty and incisive observations.

I was left undisturbed to cope with Julian. When he is uncomfortable, I cannot keep my thoughts on the spinning conversational plates. They get tossed my way and I let them crash to the ground. Finally Clive put me in a cab. Best I went home alone. Julian’s crying unsettles him anyway.

And
—I have sent the cheque and signed the lease. We are going to take Trevose View in Cornwall again next month. Virginia and Adrian will go down early, and Clive and I will follow after a short stay with his parents in Wiltshire. I cannot bear that my baby will be introduced to wall-mounted stag heads before he is introduced to Manet and Schubert.

Later

Clive stayed on to supper at Fitzroy Square and came home after the baby was asleep. We curled onto the sofa and gossiped. I love that my husband is an avid, unabashed gossip. Only Lytton outdoes him. He retold the stories he told at Fitzroy Square and made me feel missed and wanted. Apparently Virginia has been asked to write several more articles for the
Times Literary Supplement
. And so she has decided to give up her Morley College teaching and concentrate on writing. Odd that she did not mention it when I saw her this afternoon.

A cosy conversation with Clive this evening. I think he will sleep in our room tonight—

31 March 1908—46 Gordon Square

Yes, he did, until four am, when Julian’s crying woke him up and he went back to his own bed.

3 April 1908—46 Gordon Square

The news: Sir Henry Campbell Bannerman resigned as prime minister today because of ill health. Henry Asquith is to bump up from chancellor to PM. I must send a note.

Lytton brought his eccentric but strangely beautiful friend Lady Ottoline Morrell, who lives around the corner in Bedford Square, for tea today. She has an affected, lilting voice, long, melancholy features, and wore an astonishing hat. I was startled when she said a quick grace over her sugar bun. Lytton is certainly not religious, and I was surprised he would be so friendly with anyone who is. When she left, Lytton told me that she was the mother of twins, a boy and a girl, but the boy died of a haemorrhage a few days after his birth. Awful. I can understand her belief in God. Lytton said the little girl survived and is called Julian. I was pierced through.
Julian
.

11 April 1908—46 Gordon Square (raining)

Moving a family is exhausting. Clive will help when I ask him to but cannot seem to be able to look around and notice what needs to be done in order to relocate our son to his parents’ home.

In the end, I decided to buy all new clothes for Julian as he is growing so rapidly. I do not want to risk shopping with Clive’s family. I feel piecemeal and disorganised.

And—
We were hoping Lytton and possibly Saxon could come to Cornwall, but it is not to be. We will all meet in London when we return.

Thursday 16 April 1908—Cleeve House, Seend, Wiltshire

The train journey was ghastly. A tasteless man held forth on the evils of interracial social mixing—loudly, for the benefit of the entire carriage, ad nauseam. Hideous. Luckily I had Lytton’s latest draft of rude poetry to entertain me.

When we got here, it was hardly any better. Clive’s bullyboy father gave Cory, Clive’s brother, a tremendous dressing-down at luncheon today. It was appalling to see Cory, a grown man and such a nice one, get belittled like that. Clive’s nervous, rabbit-faced mother could do nothing to stop the onslaught. Cory and Clive, accustomed to such scenes, just sat in silence and waited for it to end. I am terrified that this loud, volatile house will affect Julian, but he seems as placid as he was in London.

Luncheon with the Raven Hills and the Armours tomorrow. Curious to see what she looks like. The men should be interesting as well—Mr Raven Hill and Mr Armour are
Punch
artists.

And
—bottle feeding. Am using binding and am still terribly sore.

17 April 1908—Cleeve House, Seend, Wiltshire (nine pm—the grisly supper ritual over)

Mrs Raven Hill is as double-chinned, flat-bottomed, and vulgar as I could hope for my husband’s former lover. But she is also direct, and I liked her immediately. She and Mrs Armour and I had a blunt and shocking conversation about sex: birth control, childbirth, husbands, and lovers. It seems once one is married with a baby, the jig is up, and we are allowed to speak frankly about sex with anyone. Clive’s eyebrows lifted straight up into his red curls when he heard us. I must remember to tell Lytton all I learned. The intricacies of female sexual plumbing fascinate him.

Later

“She keeps suggesting I kiss your eyeball,” Clive said, apropos of nothing. We were having coffee in the small library. He was seated in the musty armchair opposite, reading a letter while I sketched.

“Who wants you to kiss my eyeball?” I asked, looking up.

“Virginia, of course. Who else would say such a thing? Not only your eyeball: your earlobe, elbow, temple, and collarbone. She is very specific.”

“She wants to be included,” I said. A year since the wedding, and I had hoped Virginia would have accepted that marriages are restricted to two people, but so far this essential truth has eluded her.

“I do like your elbow,” Clive said, laying aside his letter and crossing to lightly kiss my neck. “And your collarbone is nice too. She chooses well.”

We left our coffee on the tray and went upstairs.

· ·

W
E STAYED UP TO SEE
the sunrise, curled in the heavy warm of our bed. We talked of Lytton’s heartbreak and Maynard’s lack of empathy, Duncan’s clean selfishness, Desmond’s ongoing renovations, and the expensive new windows needed for the nursery at Gordon Square. We talked of Julian’s cold, and the early-blooming pear tree in our garden, and Clive’s lost grey overcoat, left on a London train. And then we whispered about our work: my new canvas, his new essay, the new exhibitions we are planning to see in Paris next spring, the things we have done and will do together. We are such a
together
sort of together. A very whole whole. A family.

17 April 1908

My Violet
,

Nessa has eloped to Wiltshire with her true love, Baby Julian. She permitted Clive to accompany them but only on the understanding that he sleep down the hall. I find it elating to see him ousted from the crook of Nessa’s heart. She does not even realise that she has done it. I hope it lasts. Nessa invited me to join them on this visit to the terrifying Bells, but I nimbly leapt aside to avoid the hurtling threat. Clive’s rambunctious family of overfed philistines offend every sense I have.