The sun is high enough over the lodge that she can feel it, warm as a searchlight on her back, glaring through the windows. Yes, she thinks with a pouring relief, there will be no more planes, no bombs, no guns, no hot lights in the menacing dark. There will be none of these things anymore, only the lulling, purifying sound of water, and the end of everything.
She looks up and sees with a shock that it is already eleven o’clock. Through the pair of French doors at the front of the lodge, which she had thrown open first thing to catch the rasping of the natterjacks, she can make out Leonard, still some distance back, coming across the orchard lawn to fetch her, purposeful as ever in his country togs. She must meet him at the door. Rising from the chair, she pulls open a drawer in the desk, removes two blank blue envelopes and arranges them over the notes.
As she emerges from the lodge, Leonard is about to step up onto the wood planking that serves as a veranda for this retreat. There are two low-slung canvas deck chairs there, one on each side of the open doors. She and Leonard, or visiting friends, have often sat here for a smoke under the chestnut tree and whiled away the afternoon talking. But they will not sit there now. As she meets him, Leonard is already turning to lead her back to the house. Lunch will be ready at one, and he is insisting that she lie down for at least half an hour before then. He is going to finish some work.
She promises him that she will rest, but first she tells him she would like to take a short walk.
“I have been cooped up all morning,” she says.
He gives her a look, but reluctantly agrees, and disappears again into his study. Once she sees that he has closed the door, she rushes out again to the lodge to retrieve the notes. She writes the names Leonard and Vanessa respectively on the two envelopes, folds the letters and puts each in its rightful place. Then, envelopes in hand, she scurries back to the house, straight up the stairs and into the sitting room. She places the envelopes side by side on the table, looks at them for a long moment, then pulls herself away and races back down the stairs to the hall. There she puts on her fur coat, takes up her walking stick and heads out again, this time down the garden path, out the back gate by the church and onto the path that leads to the Ouse. When she reaches the river, she walks a little ways along it toward the bridge at Southease.
When she is satisfied with the spot, she stops. Setting down her walking stick, she picks up a heavy, grimed mudstone from the ground and turns it over in her hands, rubbing portions of its smoothed surface with her thumbs to reveal the dark red and purple bands of clay running through it. She closes her eyes and brings it close to her face. Open-mouthed, she inhales the sweet reek of ferrous soil and roots and river water. She stands this way for some time, breathing in the stone. Then, from the left hip pocket of her coat she pulls a small vial that she has filled with some of Octavia’s milk. Still holding the stone in her right hand, with the thumb and index finger of her left hand she eases the glass stopper from the top of the bottle. As she does so, she hears the dying voice of the old man, incanting her epitaph.
We that have done and thought . . . that have thought and done.
When she has it free, she lets the heavy glass stopper drop to the ground. She holds the stone aloft in front of her, and slowly, lifting the vial above it, she pours its contents over the stone. She watches as the thick, opaque whiteness of the milk drops onto the red and purple bands of the mudstone. Then, slowly, as it slides and dilutes, she observes the glaucous film it leaves behind. And she feels the cool, caressing drool of it dripping down her hand and forearm as the voice of the old man ends his lament.
We that have done . . . Must ramble, and thin out . . . like milk spilt on a stone.
She drops the vial, puts the dripping stone into the right hip pocket of her coat and moves forward. Taking Adeline’s hand, which is frail and moist with trepidation, despite the look of radiant satisfaction in her eyes, Virginia moves to the very edge of the bank. The current is tidal here—mystic, as Yeats had said—and the freshet is high, rushing by with wild and vertiginous force. Yet, still, it sounds eerily far away, like the roar of the sea inside a shell.
There is a wind coming off the swell that chills her. She pulls her coat tighter over her chest and feels the weight of the stone shift from the awkward precipice of her hip to settle neatly like a tumescence in the lean concavity of her bowel.
The river is a strong brown god. Poor Tom’s a-cold.
It is Tom’s final call, but there is no Lytton now to goad. He is on his bed of loam somewhere, reclining, ignorant of this. And so, at last, in absolute quiescence, let him rest.
There is only Adeline to answer. Ever the dutiful schoolgirl, she has learned her lessons well. Never twice, you infernal Greek! she yelps. Never the same river twice.
She is trying to be brave, but there is a heart-rending tremor in her voice. Virginia gently squeezes her hand, in both reassurance and thanks, but she does not turn or look back. She must be firm, as decreed, unvanquished and unyielding. “Yes,” she says, her face a mask of calm determination. She looks down at her wristwatch and sees that it is a quarter to twelve. “Never twice,” she murmurs, and she steps into the river.
Author’s Note
I consulted many primary and secondary sources while researching this novel, but among them, far and away the most comprehensive and indispensable was Hermione Lee’s biography Virginia Woolf. I drew on it extensively for facts, dates and events, as well as information about Virginia Woolf’s relationships, states of mind and works. I owe an immense debt of gratitude to Lee for giving us such a full and detailed portrait of this remarkable artist.
I learned a great deal from Michael Holroyd’s biography Lytton Strachey, and from it (in the second scene of Act II, between Lytton and Virginia) I have quoted Freud’s letter to Strachey verbatim.
Also of great use to me in my research were Nigel Nicolson’s short biography Virginia Woolf; Stephen Spender’s autobiography World Within World; Carole Seymour-Jones’s Painted Shadow: The Life of Vivienne Eliot, First Wife of T. S. Eliot; Susan Johnston Graf’s W. B. Yeats: Twentieth-Century Magus; and Richard Ellmann’s Yeats: The Man and the Masks. Finally, I made copious use of the letters, journals and autobiographical works of Virginia and Leonard Woolf, as well as the letters of Lytton Strachey and T. S. Eliot.
Acknowledgments
I would like to thank my agent, Eric Simonoff, for his infinite patience, his friendship and his belief. I am also immeasurably grateful to my editor, Lauren Wein, as well as to my old colleague and friend, HMH honcho Bruce Nichols. Thank you for taking the leap with me.
About the Author
NORAH VINCENT is the New York Times best-selling author of Self-Made Man as well as two other books. Formerly an op-ed columnist for the Los Angeles Times, she has also contributed regularly to Salon, the Advocate, and the Village Voice. She lives in New York City.
Adeline Page 25