Vanessa and Her Sister (45 page)

I am no longer afraid to meet her, Lytton. Instead, I feel an apprehension born of unfounded ironbound certainty. It is borrowed conviction, and it stems from you. I know very well it may dissolve into dust when your Virginia steps out of myth into flesh, but like a light left burning in a window, it has been enough to lead me home. Thank you for remembering to love me so well and so consistently. You have a rare gift for friendship.

Yours
,  

Leonard

PS:
I find I am packing the things I love best, in case I never return.

HRH KING EDWARD VII POSTAL STATIONERY

15 April 1911—Hôtel d’Anatolie, Brusa

A strangely important day. It may be because we are in the hometown of the Olympian gods, but things feel weighted here. Predestined, foretold.

Today I lost the ring Clive gave me when we became engaged.

We spent the day as usual: Roger and I painting on a hillside, and Clive and Harry kicking about looking for ruins. We sketched a Turkish man and his wife in a palette of dark oils against the bright backdrop of a sun-whitened wall. I painted the wife, and she and I were delighted with the dramatic result. The sweet couple asked us into their home for tea and invited us to rinse our hands in well water. I removed my rings, including the pretty French antique engagement ring, and put them in my lap. I forgot they were there, and when I stood, the engagement ring fell into the long, deep well. The couple were terribly distressed, and the man fetched a pane of glass to try to see into the dark water, but it was hopeless. The wife burst into noisy tears.

I tried to calm the distraught couple and told them that it was all right and they must be sure to remember me when it surfaces one day, but when the wife understood that it was my engagement ring, she could not be consoled. When I turned to find him, Clive had slipped away.

16 April 1911—Hôtel d’Anatolie, Brusa

We have become a subdued group since the business about the ring. Clive did not mention it again, and neither did I.

Later—seven pm (in my room)

Came to bed early with a sick headache and fever. Worried I ate something I oughtn’t, but then the whole day has felt off.

18 April 1911—Hôtel d’Anatolie, Brusa

Ill. Dreadfully ill. Roger is here with me.

19 April 1911—Hôtel d’Anatolie, Brusa

Wretched. The doctor is coming.

TÉLÉGRAMME

OFFICE OF POSTAL DELIVERY

BRUSA, ANATOLIA
INTERNATIONAL CABLE

DEAREST VIRGINIA. STOP. VANESSA ILL. STOP. PLEASE COME TO BRUSA. STOP. NOT THREATENING BUT WOULD RATHER YOU WERE WITH US. STOP. ARRANGE THROUGH COOK’S. STOP. CABLE ARRIVAL DATE AND TIME. STOP. WILL MEET THE TRAIN. STOP. ALL LOVE CLIVE.
GBSW1H93468—RECIPIENT MUST SIGN UPON DELIVERY

20 April 1911—Hôtel d’Anatolie, Brusa (sunset)

It is still our hour to talk, but now we stay in while everyone goes out to see the sun set. Roger pulls his chair close to the bed. He twitches the sheet and straightens the blankets. I rewrap my dressing gown and smooth it tight. The tea grows cool in the cups. We do not want it. We do not bother. This is our hour alone.

Friday 21 April 1911—Hôtel d’Anatolie, Brusa

“London to Paris, Paris to Naples. Naples to Athens. And then the boat from Patras to Constantinople and the train on to Brusa,” Clive said, reading the cable. “She will be here by Monday.”

“Yes,” I said, resigned. I felt I had the energy to speak to Clive only in few words.
Yes
was less complicated than
no
.

And then Roger gently shooed Clive from the room.

He can do that. It is audacious, but he does not mean it to be. It is just a truthful recognition that Clive is not handling my sickness well. When Thoby was ill, Clive swooped in like a bureaucratic angel, organising doctors and specialists and servants and patients. As my husband rather than my lover, he has lost that kind, firm touch. He has forgotten the specifics of me, of us. Instead, hamfisted and melodramatic, he overplays it, and Roger will not permit theatrics when I am so ill.

Roger has come into his own. He sits with me during the day and sleeps in a chair by the bed at night. Calm and generous, he has shepherded me through my discomfort. It was a fever, most likely brought on by the water or something I ate. Not a terrible fever but frightening for a family such as ours. We know what can come of a fever.

Roger rises to the moment. He meets the world so beautifully. Our talk runs unbroken, like a vein of water under the ground, punctuated by sleep and deep, comfortable silence. Level and dignified, he tells me of his wife. He tells me of the callus that refuses to grow over his love for her. He tells me of his brief, mistaken affair with Ottoline. I felt a thin white current of jealousy, but it subsided when I realised that the intimacy
it took for him to tell me about their affair trumped the fleeting intimacy he had shared with her.

And he tells me how he loves me. The first time, he said it cleanly and with pride. He loves me. I see that now. He says he has known from the beginning. From the day on the train. “It was in everything you did
not
say,” Roger said. “It was in the way you listened. It was the way you occupied a room. The way you held the floor without knowing it. You overwhelmed me.” His is not a light, airborne love. It is anchored deeply, resting comfortably on the sea floor. “It has only happened once before,” he said, gently sitting on the side of my bed.

Helen. There will always be Helen.

Later

We love but are not lovers. Moments appear, light-footed and indistinct, where we could manoeuvre into sex, but not yet. It is not time for that yet. I wait for his regret, his guilt, but it does not come. He is a man who always sees the good in things. And in his mind, love is always good.

REGRETFULLY YOURS

22 April 1911—Brusa

I
asked Clive to cable and intercept Virginia. The English doctor says it is definitely not typhoid, but just a fever. He prescribed rest and toasted bread only. The local doctor also says it is a fever and prescribed rest and citrus fruit. It is agreed, I will recover. She does not need to come.

“But you
need
her to come. You need
family
, Nessa,” Clive said plaintively. I need to be nursed by someone other than Roger, he means. Clive looks at me differently. It’s not the hungry, thwarted look from before we were married. But differently. It is a regretful, lost look. I have seen this look on Julian’s face, when he puts down a toy and Quentin picks it up. That underestimation. Now that Roger loves me, Clive sees my value again. I am meaningful because I am loved by a man he respects. Carefully, gingerly, he plies me with affection. It is impersonal. It is too late.

ON A SWING

24 April 1911—Brusa

“N
essa!” Virginia called from the hallway.

She and Clive burst into my room. Roger rose to greet them. I watched Virginia do the sums in her head. She noticed everything: Roger’s chair pulled close to the narrow bed, his reading glasses on the nightstand, his rumpled clothes and unslept-in cot in the corner, my flushed cheeks and blue silk nightgown. But she does not know Roger well enough to muster disdain. Instead, she began to flirt. It is her instinct. It is not the keen-bladed intellectual taunting she employs with Clive. Instead she softened with Roger and grew coy.

Clive watched, woolly and confused, from the doorway as Virginia fussed and deferred to Roger. Roger was not flattered, because he did not recognise what was happening. Things that do not matter to him are invisible.

Later

The tables have turned quickly. Virginia snaps at Clive. She seeks only Roger’s attention. We all had supper on trays in my sickroom. Clive watched Virginia and me the way one watches a ship bearing loved ones
pull away from the harbour. He seems to understand that it is over with them. I hope he understands that it is over with us.

Still later

They have all gone to look at the moon. Virginia was buoyant and elastic tonight when talking to anyone but Clive. This afternoon she told us about an evening she spent with Lytton last week. Leonard Woolf has taken ship from India and is on his way. Lytton has been dropping by Fitzroy Square to give Virginia daily bulletins. By today, he is packed. By today, he is in Colombo. Virginia finds Lytton’s certainty endearing if a little strange.

“I feel like an Eastern bride who has been matchmaked. Is that a word?” she asked Roger, knowing of course that it isn’t.

“Lytton is perceptive,” Roger said. “You may want to consider it.”

Tuesday 25 April 1911—Brusa

“Yes, see the mosaics,” I said. “I will be fine.”

“Yes,” said Virginia, looking at Roger. “I would hate to miss them.”

I did not point out that the last time we were here she refused to see them.

“Nessa?” Roger asked, leaving the final decision to me. Virginia watched, envious. Clive sat quietly, his face difficult to read.

“Go,” I said.

Later (six pm)

Virginia asked Roger to take her to see the sunset, and Clive came to see me.

“Fever staying down?” he asked officiously, shaking the thermometer.

“I just did it, honestly. There is no need to do it again,” I said.

Clive sat in Roger’s chair. “Virginia seems well,” he said flatly.

“Yes.”

“Nessa,” Clive said, gathering himself like a diver from a springboard. “Nessa, I would like us to try to have a real marriage again.”

“Clive—”

“Please, let me finish.” He stood and began to pace. He thinks better when he is in motion. “I was careless and selfish, and I should have been happy with only you. I am sure I
could
be happy with only you.”

“Not Mrs Raven Hill?”

“Not Mrs Raven Hill.”

“And not Virginia?”

“There never was a Virginia, it turns out. It was you she loved. It is
always
you they love. I ought to have seen that,” Clive said, sitting heavily on the bed. “Roger sees it.” When cornered, he chooses honesty. It is one of his best qualities.

“We have our beautiful boys,” I said. “We have a happy life together. We have a modern marriage—just what you wanted.”

“Your answer is no, then?” Clive said, turning to it squarely.

“My answer is no.”

We sat together a long time, settling into the new silence of well-meaning friends.

27 April 1911—Brusa (early)

“Nessa?” Virginia said quietly, in case I was asleep.

“I am up,” I said, although I really wasn’t. “Where’s Roger?”

My first question. The corners of Virginia’s mouth swung together primly, like curtains at a play.

“Organising our visit to the river, I think. Do you need anything?” She stood and began fluffing pillows.

“Yes,” I said sharply. “I need you to leave him alone.”

“Who?” She sat quickly in the chair. Rapt. “Clive?” She was buying time.

“Roger,” I said, letting the name drift slowly to the ground between us.

“Dearest, I never …” Virginia laid her head on the bed, wanting to be pet.

“No, Virginia. Sit up.” I would not resume the foggy, affectionate animal habits until she understood. “You have been flapping about all week trying to pander to him, to flirt with him, even though he is oblivious.”

“Nessa!”

“No, Virginia. You
ruin
. You ruin whatever you see coming between you and me. Roger is
not
my lover. He is my friend, but that hardly matters. We have a fragile, particular friendship, and you will destroy it if you can. As you destroyed my marriage. You cannot help yourself. You do not want something of your own. You want what is mine.”