Vanessa and Her Sister (9 page)

His rooms were not what I expected. Original Toulouse-Lautrec lithographs shared the mantel with invitations to shooting parties in Scotland. The bookshelves were crowded with a mix of Dickens, Shakespeare, Roman and Greek history, and books about fish. The conversation was unexpected too. I discovered he loves one of my loves: Jane
Austen. Unusual for so outdoorsy a man to be interested in the indoorsy lives of women.

He walked me home. In the square, he paused by the large lilac tree he knows is my favourite. Wordlessly brave, he knelt and asked.

A silent beat. And another. I took a shallow breath, held very still, and tried not to think. A tide of instinct roared through me.

I kissed the top of his head and told him no. I could not understand yes, could not envisage yes, so it had to be no.

“No? Just no?” Clive asked, fighting to keep his voice level.

“No for now is cruel, don’t you think?” I asked. I was anxious to have the question settled.

“No for now is kind,” he said standing, without letting go of my hand.

“But when does
now
end?” He had no answer.

Later (half past three in the morning)

Clive guessed right. No for now is the truth. But is the truth fair? I do not want him to go, but I am not sure enough to go with him.

2 August 1905—46 Gordon Square

I have written to Snow. A crass, flighty letter that I regret. I was not genuine, and I hate that. Wrong of me to write at all. This sort of business is best kept between those it concerns.

Saturday 5 August 1905—46 Gordon Square

I have not told Thoby but feel that I must. He mentioned that Clive was not himself yesterday at lunch. I want to reach out to him but do not want to give the wrong impression. But then what is the wrong impression? Surely the right impression can only be the truth?

9 August 1905—46 Gordon Square

Limbo: packed but not gone. Exhausted but not travelled. I still have not told Thoby but he keeps mentioning Clive’s ongoing strangeness. Clive leaves for Scotland on Thursday. Thursday, and no one will be at home.

GODREVY LIGHTHOUSE

10 August 1905—Trevose View, Carbis Bay, Cornwall (seven pm—exhausted)

W
e are here. The house is
not
beautiful but it is many-windowed and set apart in a crook of Cornish seascape. I have taken the large blue bedroom overlooking the bay. I was feeling selfish and was going to cede it to Virginia but found she liked the writing desk in the yellow bedroom. Thoby is shouting in the hallway—

12 August 1905—Trevose View, Carbis Bay

We have forded the brook, swum the bay, scaled the wall, crawled the brush, and scouted the old house. Really we just took the footpath and
looked over the escallonia hedge at Talland House, but Virginia insisted it was a great adventure, and her enthusiasm changed the day. The old house looked entirely the same. We did not see the occupants, but the accoutrements were familiar: striped bathing towels, bathing costumes, sandy buckets, and straw hats dropped on wooden chairs.

I told Thoby, and he was unsurprised. He worries for Clive.

17 August 1905—Trevose View, Carbis Bay

We have settled into the rhythm of the sea.

Great Oakley Hall, Kettering

25 August 1905

Dear Bell
,

Oh my dear. The angels and I weep for you. The Goth—only after much hounding and gnashing of teeth—finally told me of your thwarted suit. Brave man, to have ventured such a question to such a formidably lovely woman. Quel courage, mon brave. Hold tight to your conviction. If there is a symmetry—and I suspect there is—a righting of wrongings will follow. Be sure you are prepared to live up to her love, should you win her.

As I told you before, she is a cautious creature. Given to bone-shattering honesty. Believe all her words. The Goth told me she has said no but left bread crumbs for you to find her? To horse! Storm the castle and take the keep, for she does nothing by accident. Nor is she careless, like her sister. Virginia would set the house on fire just to watch everyone come running out in pyjamas. Vanessa might not know herself what she wants, but she will show you her muddle. I like that about her.

I have also found a clear ringing passion. It is Duncan, my beautiful cousin. He is also given to brutal honesty, but his sincerity rides a capricious horse. He lacks Vanessa’s self-perception. He will break my heart into a thousand glassy shards. How maudlin I am today. Forgive me.

Yours
,

Lytton

30 August 1905—Trevose View, Carbis Bay, Cornwall

I was wrong. The sea does not offer its rhythm, nor its colours, lightly. It is a snarling blue beast in one moment and a frothy jade pool the next. It is disinclined to sit for a portrait.

Later

Life
by
the sea, on the other hand, has taken on a predictable, lolling rhythm. In the mornings: I paint, Virginia writes, Thoby reads, and Adrian does whatever mysterious things Adrian does—and then we play piquet. We gather for a simple, elemental luncheon: bread, salami, cheese, fruit, tea. In the afternoons: more painting, more reading, more writing, some beaching, some bathing, some walking, more tea, and then more piquet.

7 September 1905—Carbis Bay, Cornwall

We are remembered in the village—many people recall us running on the beach as children and many more remember Mother—and this morning we were scooped up into a conversation with the new owners of Talland House. The grocer introduced us. The new tenants are an artist couple. Their children are just the ages we were when we last lived there. Symmetry. That house reaches for artists to weave into its magic.

Later

A difficult conversation after supper tonight. Thoby spoke of how Mother was the quieter and the more reserved of our parents, yet how
everyone
still remembers her best. Virginia felt compelled to stand up for Father’s crashing, keen, razored intellect. Adrian looked stricken, as he does whenever we talk of Mother. He was her last baby, and her favourite.

POST CARD

This Space to Be Used for Correspondence

8 September 1905

Dear Leonard
,
Why did I do it? Why did I encourage Bell in his relentless pursuit of Vanessa. Pity? Can only be. He has been loafing about pining for months. He swears that he loves her to his deepest depths. But Bell’s deepest depths just won’t do. I have been watching her, it is impossible not to watch her, and I know that she is not someone to love lightly. She rings low and true in a single, pure note. And Bell? I know you care for him, as does the Goth, and that says much. He is a charming man. A winning man. But I am not convinced he has the weight to balance her. Luckily, I also think he lacks the gravity to pull her away from her family. Just as well. I wish you were here. You see these things so clearly.

 
Yours,
Lytton

To:
Mr Leonard Woolf
Assistant Gov’t Agent
Jaffna, CEYLON

YOUNG MEN ON BICYCLES IN BRIGHTON

8 September 1905—Trevose View, Carbis Bay, Cornwall

“But she only sent two chapters! What am I supposed to do with two chapters—and not even the first two!” Virginia said, striding into the room, waving loose pages in her hand. Nelly had sent her unfinished
novel to Virginia for criticism. I collected it from the post office this morning.

“Mmm.” Not a satisfactory answer for Virginia. I was trying to flesh out a rambunctious bit of the sea by adding undertones of red and ochre. Whistler often used that technique to much better effect. My sea now looks like a shallow puddle flocking over river mud.

“Nessa!”

“And what do you think of the pages?” I asked, dipping my brush in turpentine.

“I have not read them, of course. How can I? It is incomplete.” She thumped down onto the striped canvas deck chair.

“Maybe you should try?”

Later

Now Virginia
likes
the chapters. Her brisk weather vane shifts leave me dizzy.

“They are very good,” Virginia pronounced, crumbling her teacake rather than eating it.

“Even though they are not the beginning?” I asked with a light hand of mischief.

She sat very still. “You know they could be. Why not? Why must a novel begin at the beginning? Who declares such a rule? Who defends it?”

I looked at her, concerned. “You sound medieval when you talk like that.”

“I feel medieval. Like an armoured knight on a roan warhorse riding into the blood-soaked fray.”

“The blood-soaked fray being Nelly’s novel? Not much of a warrior—she’s deaf,” I said.

“No, the wider, oppressive fray.” Virginia’s voice was growing louder. “The can and can’t, do and don’t fray of convention in literature that I hate.”

“And you are going to take it on?” I could not keep the scepticism from my voice.

“Yes,” she said, and walked off towards Godrevy Lighthouse.

I watched her pick up her lean, snapping gait. Virginia is always in motion. Her tempo is staccato and quick. Even when her body rests, her mind tumbles over and over like a lock. Her way is acquisitive. She is always interested in more—more affection, more attention, more contact, more safety, more warmth, more secrets. Her writing never catches its breath either. As soon as she has settled on a style, she grows bored with it. The freshness lost, she discards it and seeks something new. I worry she can never be still and happy at the same time. Her imagination feeds itself on motion.

Very late—my blue room, chilly night

I do not doubt Virginia’s talent. I
know
she is gifted. But mine is a deliberate, remembered knowing: as if it is a hat I must try not to lose. And then sometimes she is changed. Sometimes she arches away from me and wears a light halo of genius about her. Then she is not
my
Virginia at all. At those times I feel horribly earthbound and built of base metals.