by Maggie Humm
“You have milk because you need all your strength for one adventure today and a second adventure tomorrow!”
His tone was humorous and his high-domed forehead free from its usual frown. Lily wiped her mouth with a napkin before her lips could part. Adventures and Mr. Ramsay seemed an incongruous juxtaposition.
“I asked Sophie to prepare a picnic,” he continued, “because today we will walk to Porthcurno and eat buns, looking at the emerald-green sea. Tomorrow the weather also promises to be fair, and I have instructed Macalister to sail with us to the lighthouse. We can take parcels for the lighthouse man’s boy, as we always did, although the boy will be grown up now, probably a lighthouse keeper himself, like his father. Miss Briscoe will need the house free of our bustle to concentrate on painting your mother’s portrait.”
His voice quivered a little on the word mother. Lily looked on, surprised at the fluid friendliness of his little speech. The family would reach the lighthouse at last. Mr. Ramsay hadn’t mentioned his writing or his important papers at all since they’d arrived, and he’d been giving the children his full attention. She nodded gratefully as he stood up, shaking crumbs from his waistcoat. The picnic today should leave Talland House empty for several hours. Emotions were packed tight into each brick; a house always offered something new to visitors, and Talland House would offer everything to her and Mrs. Beckwith. Tomorrow she could try to complete the portrait. She pressed her hands together under the tablecloth to calm the tension before leaving the breakfast room.
The cries of seagulls wheeling around in the sky above underscored the bright sunlight. By her easel she waited as Mr. Ramsay and the children strode briskly past her to the gate, with the dog barking alongside. Checking the canvas, the painted image seemed almost firm in spite of her turbulent thoughts. Mrs. Ramsay’s shape was transformed from the outline she’d created nearly a decade ago, but the canvas was unfinished. Somehow her death needed to find a way into the portrait, so in painting she could exorcise the mystery. All the masses and spaces were complete, as well as an H-shaped pattern linking everything together, but when in the past she’d painted foreground shapes, they’d always reflected the sky or water’s rippling surface. How would she light the sky above Mrs. Ramsay?
Lily glanced at the dining room window and noticed Mrs. Beckwith alongside Mildred, both earnestly staring outwards. In a moment they were gone. She instantly cleaned her brushes, hoping Mrs. Beckwith wouldn’t start investigating without her, and walked quickly into the house to find the elderly lady waiting at the foot of the staircase, holding a finger to her lips.
Mrs. Ramsay’s bedroom door was open. The two women closed it firmly behind them, and Lily handed Mrs. Beckwith Sophie’s little bottle, describing how she’d seen Mrs. Ramsay use whatever the bottles contained at the Arts Club dinner. Knowing her friend’s predilection for accurate facts, she refused all embellishments. She set out bare details about the Ramsay medical history, as much as she’d overheard, and her precise observations, particularly remembering the Arts Club dinner, the moment in the house hallway after Mr. Ramsay’s violent breakfast outburst, and Mrs. Ramsay’s appearance then.
“I saw the whiteness of her face and her sunken eyes on several occasions,” she added.
Mrs. Beckwith took the stopper from the bottle and sniffed the contents.
“I wish we had another bottle with full labelling, for the sake of comparison,” she said. “Did you witness any discolouration of her skin, particularly on her hands? Did she ingest an inordinate amount of liquid?”
Lily explained Mrs. Ramsay usually wore white lace half gloves with the fingers poking through, like many Victorian ladies, so she’d never seen all of her hands.
“There were some dark marks on her neck, the cook had told Hilary, and she often called for tea, but I thought this simply the generosity of a good hostess.”
Mrs. Beckwith nodded. “Tea would dehydrate her even more.”
Though the discussion resembled their talks in the basement of Queen Alexandra’s hospital, when they’d compared notes about doctors’ scripts and patient symptoms, Lily felt the difference. Mrs. Ramsay was a wholly beautiful woman whom she loved, not the patients whose names she sometimes failed to remember. She glanced around the room, holding back her tears, trying to match Mrs. Beckwith’s calm practicality.
“Could we examine the contents of the furniture?” Mrs. Beckwith asked. “Although I’m sure everything will have been removed.”
They opened the wardrobe and checked each drawer of the dressing table, but all were bare and clean.
“Mrs. McNab did mention a collection of ribbons and handkerchiefs,” Lily said, “but they were rotten, and she discarded them during her cleaning.”
The lock of the garden gate tapping against the gatepost interrupted her. Both women stood unmoving, listening for footsteps on the path, worried the Ramsays had abandoned their plans. Lily felt as if she were in the middle of a troubling dream where nothing might ever be finished.
“It’s the rising wind,” Mrs. Beckwith said in a low voice, obviously relieved. “I trust the wind will be equally strong tomorrow for the boat trip to the lighthouse.”
Lily read the unstated thought in Mrs. Beckwith’s eyes. They both hoped for another free day in case the house didn’t open up its secrets now. Looking around the room, Lily noticed the trunk’s brass lock in the corner, shining in the sunlight. Memories flashed past her in quick succession, delightful hours of opening her mother’s trunk and dressing up in swathes of elegant fabrics. She’d loved the silk scarves most of all.
“We should check the trunk’s contents,” she said, “although Mrs. McNab must have cleared it.”
A day brighter than other memories came into her mind —the moment when her mother had shown her the trunk’s secret compartment.
“I keep hidden there my most precious jewellery,” her mother had said. “It will all be yours one day, my darling.”
The two women lifted the heavy lid, and Lily took out a set of drawers. They were empty.
“But there could be a secret compartment under the base,” she told Mrs. Beckwith. “In my mother’s trunk no one would have known the bottom was hollow, accessed by prodding at the side. There was no handle, simply a metal spring inside, which made a small compartment slide out when pushed.”
She shoved the bottom hard while Mrs. Beckwith held on tight to the top, but it was stiff with lack of use. The garden gate rattled again. They both held their breath, not even blinking, but there were no steps on the path. As she pressed again at the side of the drawer, Lily sensed a slight movement. Two more quick shoves and the base shot sideways. Inside a small compartment were two intact, unused little bottles.
Mrs. Beckwith carefully placed them onto the dressing table in the clear light, removing each stopper in turn and sniffing cautiously. The labels were clean, each displaying the same skull and crossbones Lily had seen on bottles in the pharmacy.
Mrs. Beckwith looked grave. “I would need my proper equipment here to make any summative diagnosis.”
Lily stood waiting, her whole body a pincushion with prickles of fear, desperate to replace everything in exactly the same position in case Mr. Ramsay made a sudden return.
“You can see from the labels one of these bottles is Fowler’s solution and the other is Donovan’s solution,” Mrs. Beckwith continued. “Both contain arsenic in small amounts.”
The names lay at the shadowy edge of Lily’s knowledge. She dimly remembered the hospital medicines she wasn’t allowed to touch sometimes contained arsenic.
“But medicines cannot cause harm?’
“The medicines would be properly prescribed,” Mrs. Beckwith said, “and arsenic in tiny doses can aid the digestion, but Mrs. Ramsay’s constant use of these bottles, as you described, would not be prescribed. I’m afraid the poor lady would become seriously ill from arsenic poisoning with her overuse of these digestive aids. In Mrs. Ramsay’s youth, arsenic was commonly available
—ladies soaked flypapers in water to extract arsenic to whiten their complexions.”
Mrs. Beckwith’s history lessons were not what she wanted to hear. She needed some other explanation of Mrs. Ramsay’s behaviour, something to make sense of all this.
“If such medicines were everyday,” Lily said, her voice rising, “why would Mr. Ramsay be so secretive about removing things from her room and preventing a doctor’s full examination or autopsy?”
The two women stood for a moment listening. Hearing merely noises from the kitchen, Mrs. Beckwith continued.
“The medicines were not commonly used by the time of Mrs. Ramsay’s death. Prescriptions evolved from this type of old-fashioned remedy long before the war. There could be a more serious reason why Mrs. Ramsay disguised her use of them, and why Mr. Ramsay hid things.”
The account was becoming like one of Lily’s favourite gothic novels. What possible reason could there be for such secrecy? The idea Mr. Ramsay had colluded in some way with his wife’s death, or even worse, floated in the room.
“I enter here into pure speculation, my dear, since we have no evidence, but it was in the war an excellent mixture of arsenic became widely used, although the effects on the body were harsh. The arsenic-based liquid Salvarsan cured syphilis. You may remember Salvarsan in my pharmacy for our patients who suffered venereal diseases?”
Before Lily could reply, a dog’s bark sounded near the house. She held Mrs. Beckwith’s hand, her fingers stiff like the chalks in her satchel. The bark was not repeated.
“But the Ramsays are a respectable family!” Lily said. “How could either the mother or father possibly have syphilis?”
“Many so-called gentlemen, my dear, regularly visit prostitutes and acquire syphilis,” Mrs. Beckwith said, looking amused. “Mr. Ramsay does have violent mood swings you told me—a common first sign.”
Lily dropped Mrs. Beckwith’s hand. The Ramsays were not a troublesome family in a novel and, apart from Mr. Ramsay, were people she’d come to love. The moment before Mrs. Beckwith spoke again seemed interminable. There must be another simpler explanation, surely, but it was a slippery sensation within her, resembling the seal swimming at Gurnard’s Head.
“But I would not suggest for a moment Mr. Ramsay actually has syphilis,” Mrs. Beckwith said. “There are none of the other symptoms. He has no perceptible dark marks on his skin or a rash, and he possesses good hearing. Here again I speculate and offer an unscientific and much sadder explanation. Perhaps Mrs. Ramsay was anxious about a possible family history of syphilis in his background? Whether it was Mrs. Ramsay’s exaggerated fears about his family, or anaemia or digestive problems, the good lady obviously took arsenic-based medicines. Mr. Ramsay’s sudden recognition of her actions when he discovered the bottles after her death explains his behaviour. He would not want anyone to think less well of her. I would never conclude there was foul play.”
The Ramsays’ generation was a conspiracy of avoidance in many ways, thought Lily. The children had once mentioned a mad uncle, but all children exaggerate. A dog yapped again. The garden gate was banging, and they could hear Old Badger, Mr. Ramsay’s dog, pounding noisily up the path. She’d no idea how much time had passed since they’d entered the bedroom. No clocks had struck in the airless room, and she felt the day had paused, waiting for them to enter time again. Quickly replacing the bottles and drawer into the trunk, the two women swept onto the landing and each turned, without further comment, into their own bedrooms.
The sun’s reflection through the window blind gave no heat to her room as Lily lay down on the bed. Feeling the warmth of the quilt tucked up to her neck, the bed steady beneath her, and the softness of the pillow, she knew the world had settled again somehow. Her discoveries and Mrs. Beckwith’s explanations were real, had completed a pattern, had solved the mystery, and she felt older, mature in a new way. The shadow play of trees against the blind stuttered in the breeze. Her muscles were strained, as if she’d been carrying giant weights, and her body had never felt as heavy as it did in the afternoon’s grey light.
The next morning Lily rose late, exhausted by her dreams. All the doors were ajar. In the light from the top windows the polished furniture shone, a smell of fresh varnish absorbing yesterday’s sorrowful air, and there was a shining absence of doubt throughout the house. There’d be no more secrets discovered lurking in nooks and crannies. She would never mention the compartment in Mrs. Ramsay’s trunk to anyone, apart from the servants. Sophie had trusted her with Mrs. Ramsay’s little bottle and deserved an explanation. Lily refused to diminish the Ramsays to satisfy Hunt’s desire for a successful conclusion to his mystery.
As she walked towards the stairs, the familiar creaking of the floorboards comforted her. It was as if the past had disappeared, or the part of the past which might hurt her, and more important there was a future and it mattered. Through the long window at the end of the hall, sunshine gleaming across the garden revealed a mass of plants, and bushes tumbled, interwoven with brambles like the palace gardens surrounding Sleeping Beauty, but Lily felt wider awake than ever in her life before.
Unlike the garden, the breakfast room was unchanged, with the same ancient furniture and fading wallpaper. None of the family sat in Mrs. Ramsay’s usual chair at the table end. Although it was left empty, Mildred always placed a plate and a cup and saucer by the chair every morning as if they all imagined Mrs. Ramsay’s spirit returning, called by the smell of coffee. The woman she loved was here, too, in her heart and in the room. Lily had loved Talland House wherever she was—even in the hospital’s wartime horrors, but she felt now she understood the Ramsays at last as she watched the dust sparkle in the sunbeams falling across the table.
Mildred was clearing away dirty crockery and brushing the table free of crumbs.
“Mrs. Beckwith’s gone for a walk, and the family’s all down at the harbour, Miss. Mr. Ramsay woke them early for the boat trip to the lighthouse. They were up with the lark. It was dark when Sophie and I made sandwiches. Just as well we’d already baked the gingerbread nuts.”
Covering a yawn with a free hand, Mildred apologized as she took out the dishes. With the Ramsays’ absence the air was vaporous, the breakfast room as silent as a museum gallery. Lily imagined yesterday’s complicated jigsaw pieces falling into a neat pattern, ready to be framed and hung on a wall. A marriage could involve loyalty, be a partnership. Mr. Ramsay’s deep concern for Mrs. Ramsay’s reputation, and by implication his own, had never occurred to her. She blinked slowly. It was as clear as the light on the table—his behaviour was odd but entirely explicable. His new care for the children, his determination to take them to the lighthouse, transformed his rough black-and-white outline into a full portrait, all coloured-in. The solitary Jack of Spades had become a kindly father.
She would go on painting. There was nothing she could know about herself or others as important as this, and the impression would continue. It was in her. She felt a painful few minutes of nostalgia for what might have been, remembering the men she’d known: the almost furtive way the kindly doctor had asked her for coffee, Tom’s handsome face under his peaked cap at the suffragette atelier, the feel of Hilary’s breath on the back of her neck and her thinking all she had to do was to turn towards him and he might kiss her. Above all she missed the way in which Louis always looked at her—as if giving her his belief in art, but now she felt a rush, not of sadness, but unexpectedly of hope. She’d had to let go of Louis and yet had found something, independently. The significance of art was here and clear to her, something she’d never felt as strongly before.
Her uncertainties had given way to a kind of inevitable strength, as if everything else was irrelevant, and she’d become herself, someone who could control anything. Alone she’d discovered a kind of steady stillness, a future of her own choosing, in which she could tell herself she was fearless. Mrs. Ramsay’s shape and colour were free of black shadows. The lines were clear, and the shock of yesterday’s news would become
the focus of the portrait. This would be the last time to paint, the final days at Talland House, and she stepped purposefully into the garden.
Setting up her easel, she crossed the lawn, as she had all those years ago with Mr. Bankes, found the gap in the hedge, and saw in the far distance a small sailing boat with greyish-brown Cornish sails, skimming close to a rock. The family was reaching the lighthouse, and the sight seemed to sweep towards her, across the bay, the lawn, and into the house, making even the air brighter.
In a second Lily knew how to colour the image. It needed a strong central line but that would be for later today. First she had to finish the sky, and she understood now what tint to choose. The background had been pale all week even though she’d carefully primed the canvas. She remembered Louis’s story of how particles from the miners roasting arsenic made the Cornish air a golden colour with opalescent glass. Her sky must have an incredible lustre like Jason’s mythical fleece. The clue to Mrs. Ramsay’s death wouldn’t be part of a sad story buried within her, but the most radiant precious sky Lily could possibly paint, an immense golden glow shimmering over sea and land.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Talland House answers the unanswered questions about Mrs. Ramsay’s death in Woolf ’s To the Lighthouse. I partly follow the time structure of Woolf ’s novel, but weave into this frame a prequel, many fictions of Woolf ’s life, including her family, the artists and friends she knew, and Lily’s fictionalized life and career outside of the novel. For this, I researched contemporary newspapers, World War I histories, St Ives history, suffragette histories, medical information, the art scene at the turn of the twentieth century, and about the Stephen family and Virginia Woolf—too many books to list. Visits to Talland House, to St Ives and to Lily’s hospital the Queen Alexandra’s Hospital (now Chelsea College of Arts) supplied visual details.
I have learned so much from Virginia Woolf societies (The Virginia Woolf Society of Great Britain and the International Virginia Woolf Society), and the societies are hugely welcoming to anyone interested in Woolf.