Vanessa and Her Sister

by Priya Parmar

  Virginia came in to talk as I was writing in bed tonight. I had to quickly pull the coverlet up over this notebook. Since The Manchester Guardian accepted her article on the inn in Andalusia earlier this month, she has been even more insistent about who is the writer and who is the painter. Letters are public and mine naturally get compared to Virginia’s. My appalling spelling, my clunky phrasing, my mismatched metaphors rolling around like loose boulders, my handwriting that slopes uphill no matter how squarely I face the page—invariably, they do not equal Virginia’s hammered prose.

  And—Dinner with the Balfours tomorrow with George and Margaret. No doubt they have several eligible young men they would like us to meet. A white glove and seed pearl evening. It will be dreadful.

  Thursday 18 May 1905—46 Gordon Square

  Restless and unable to settle this afternoon. I know my demons are out in force because it is another Thursday, and after last Thursday’s disaster, I am nervous. Last week my newly shored-up confidence broke away like wet sand. In four hours the serious, literate men will arrive, and while Virginia will amuse them with her circus acrobatics of witty, well-turned phrases, cleverly layered and underscored by her ruthlessly subtle mind, I will worry if the cocoa is served and if Lytton likes the fish.

  I think in mass. In colour and shape and light and volume and texture. Not in words. Words delicately sewn around an abstract idea leave me feeling large and awkward and with nothing to say. What is the meaning of good? My mind asks “What is the colour of good? What size? What light? Where to put the bowl of poppies?”

  Later

  Not good. Wombat would not stop barking, and Lytton did not care for the fish. He would have preferred chicken.

  1 June 1905—46 Gordon Square

  Working on my portrait of Virginia and thinking about the effect of thickly layered paint. How to do it without losing the light? The translucence? I want it to be heavy but not dull, or perhaps thick but not heavy? Whistler does it and creates a finely blurred texture without the weight. I want the paint to mix right there on the canvas rather than safely on my palette. Homer’s ocean in Breezing Up has the thickened quality, but the effect is a threatening underwater darkness rather than slides of light laid against one another. I wish for depth done with more paint rather than less.

  I will ask Mr Bell about it.

  5 June 1905—46 Gordon Square (a warm evening)

  “But Nessa, do you think it’s true?” asked Virginia tenaciously, sitting on the edge of the bathtub. The window was open, and I could hear the rumble of the Number 16 omnibus.

  “I don’t know, Virginia,” I said, wrapping my breath around a patch of calm. “I only did a semi-rest cure, and I certainly did not fall in love with my doctor.”

  The bathwater was beginning to cool.

  “Elizabeth Robbins says it is inevitable,” Virginia persisted. “A certainty.”

  “Well, it wasn’t inevitable for me,” I answered, gathering my hair in my wet hand and twisting it into a messy knot at the back. As I raised my arm, Virginia’s eyes dropped unembarrassed to my exposed right breast and I quickly slid deeper into the soapy water.

  “Nessa, do you think it’s true?” she repeated in a mechanical, deliberate voice.

  “It must be,” I conceded. “If Mrs Robbins claims that in her—what is The Dark Lantern—a novel?”

  Virginia nodded.

  “Then it must be true.”

  Satisfied, Virginia left me to finish my bath.

  IN A CAMBRIDGE GARDEN IN JUNE

  Sunday 18 June 1905—Grantchester Inn, Cambridge

  “Virginia?” Lytton said, offering her a sugar bun. “Mmm. No. I thought not.” Lytton wiped his fingers on one of the blue napkins and replaced the bun in the basket.

  They are so alike in their determined fastidiousness, I thought, watching them sitting side by side on the riverbank. Brilliant, awkward, delicate, charming fusspots. They have both fastened on to this idea of calling those in our closest circle of acquaintance by their Christian names—not just when referring in conversation, which we already do anyway, but in person. It has always been easy to be familiar with my female friends such as Nelly and Snow, but I am finding it challenging in mixed company. Mr Strachey is Lytton—but that is no effort, as Lytton is such a thin, pressed name and suits him so well. Flamboyant, dainty, and usually lovesick, Lytton is a hypochondriac who is always ill or reading French literature and never shies away from outrageous topics. It would be impossible to be formal with him when he is so determined to be informal.

  I do not want to seem fusty and Victorian and am trying to remember to use Christian names but I keep misstepping. Yesterday I offered Mr Bell tea, sandwiches, and finally an umbrella. Virginia wished I would sit down and not fuss. Clive feels so personal, and the nature of the name is so loose and abrupt—like sliding on silk down a grassy hill and landing with a gentle thump. He never corrects me, nor prompts any untoward intimacy, and he keeps calling Virginia and me “the Miss Stephens.” But my Miss Stephen is gentler, softer, more lit by sunlight and fragranced with honeysuckle than Virginia’s dusty, bookish-sounding Miss Stephen. Terrible and meaningless, but I am pleased to be the more endeared for once.

  I closed my eyes to the afternoon sunshine. Getting Virginia to Cambridge had been like moving a pound of ants. She became convinced that the train would derail, the luggage would be stolen, Wombat would be lost, Thoby would fall ill, she would catch it—and on and on. She can do that as she knows I will take up the slack, arrange the tickets, see to the luggage, find the porter, water the dog, speak to the servants, and pack the sandwiches—and of course I do.

  Turning away, I watched as a pair of fat, curvy swallows dipped and fell through the summer sky.

  Later—Grantchester Inn (eleven pm)

  The talk at supper centred on the Apostles—who is and who isn’t. I knew the Apostles were an elite, strictly by invitation, all-male (naturally) debating society of the brightest young men in the university. But I didn’t know it was called the Apostles because there can only be twelve members at Cambridge at one time, although old members seem to stay involved for life. Lytton told me that the art critic Mr Roger Fry still comes back for meetings when he is in England. Thoby says that Desmond, Morgan Forster, Lytton, Saxon, and Mr Leonard Woolf, who is now a cadet in the Ceylon Civil Service, are all Apostles. Apparently Lytton’s friend, the brilliant Mr Maynard Keynes, who is reading economics at King’s, just joined them as well. Thoby does not seem the least bothered not to have been asked, but I think the subject makes Adrian uncomfortable.

  19 June 1905—Grantchester Inn

  At the inn to change into a warmer frock and then tea with Walter Headlam and his protégé, the beautiful Mr Rupert Brooke, who is another of Thoby’s sparkling university friends. Mr Brooke’s flexible skin is smooth like rosebud china, and his glossy hair sits in heavy gold chunks. His cloudy blue-eyed expression is distant, and his bearing is aloof. At luncheon, I worried I was boring him and stopped talking mid-sentence. He did not pick up the thread of the conversation, and we sat in strained silence until Thoby swept him off for badminton on the lawn.

  And—Lytton’s cousin, the painter, Mr Duncan Grant, another slim, beautiful, elfin man, has joined our party. Lytton will bring him to supper.

  Later (two am, crickets outside)

  It all came together tonight—the way one hopes an evening will do. Virginia, when she chooses, can unify a party the way a comet does. She never missed. Her words fell light as cream, and her high-boned face invited rather than challenged. She was just enough. She was beautiful.

  I sat back and watched as all the bright young men in the room fell in love with her.

  And—It was good to have another artist in the room. Duncan’s hands are long and soft, with a small, neat callus on his thumb from holding a brush—the painter’s hallmark. I felt it when he shook my hand.

  21 June 1905—46 Gordon Square, Bloomsbury (hot)

  Home, and I have beg
un sketching for another portrait of Virginia (a small oil). I always paint Virginia. I tell myself that it is the lean planes of her beautiful face that draw me, but really, it is her company I seek. This one is a simple composition: Virginia seated in the shabby green wing chair, her face quarter-turned to the right and resting in her open hand.

  The pink dusk brushed the moment with nostalgia. I remembered Virginia sitting in that chair when it lived by the fireplace on our nursery floor at Hyde Park Gate. She would sit just that way and wait her turn as Nanny or Stella brushed my thick, tangled hair first. Virginia always wanted to go second. She said she loved to watch me getting my hair brushed.

  She posed for an hour this evening, until the June light failed. Her eyes closed in comfort, and her face settled into her hand in a way it never does when she is in conversation. Her fine hair, a paler brown than mine, was swept back from her elliptical face into a loose knot and lay in the shallow curve of her long neck. She did not speak nor try to break the moment but kept impossibly still. When Virginia knows I am watching her, she does not try to be anywhere else.

  UNION POSTALE UNIVERSELLE

  CEYLON (CYLAN)

  23 June 1905

  Jaffna, Ceylon

  Lytton,

  Civilisation has found its way to my doorstep. Today my Sinhalese houseboy brought in my tin-lined crate containing my Voltaire, Johnson, Spenser, Herbert, Elton, Galsworthy, Trollope, Dickens, and Tennyson. I had given up hope it would ever reach me.

  Elton’s verses loop round my thoughts. “Luriana Lurilee,” like a summer hoop on a warm gravel drive. The Goth always recites it in June. I miss the restrained green of an English summer. Will the strangeness of this country always shock me?

  Package of semi-finished prose that I am semi-pleased with to follow.

  Yours,

  Woolf

  HRH KING EDWARD VII POSTAL STATIONERY

  FLOWERS AT THE DOOR

  Monday 3 July 1905—46 Gordon Square (a hot, close day)

  The card was simple. Just his name and mine. No “compliments.” No “thanks.” No reason.

  “Hothouse,” said Virginia, sniffing the fresh blooms.

  “Mmm.”

  “But you prefer wildflowers,” Virginia said.

  “Mmm.”

  Later (four pm)

  It is an afternoon for Blake. Coleridge is too long-winded, Byron too close to the fleshy surface, Keats too mopey, and Shelley too soft. I want the thundering, ripped edge of Blake. Pacing in the garden, in my studio, down the long hall as if to the beat of a drum.

  I LEFT WITHOUT EXPLANATION and took myself for a walk to Green Park. The fat bumblebees stepped on the early summer flowers, and two boys in matching caps were flying a white, white kite.

  He does. He doesn’t. He can’t. He won’t. Why would he? How would I? My mind folded and refolded the questions. The boys tipped their heads back to see the white kite sail over the trees, and their caps fell off.

  Clive as a suitor. I sat on a damp wooden bench. Virginia will say that Clive is prosaic. She will compare him to Thoby’s clean, marble nobility and find him meaty and overcooked. Why should I care what she says? What anyone says? Why indeed, and yet I do. It is a weakness. Thoby likes him enormously, and that counts for much. That said, I am not sure Thoby would rank him as a gentleman; gentlemen do not come from families who have earned their fortune and built great mock Jacobean heaps in the country. My Duckworth half-brothers will look down their noses at his lack of connection, but then George is getting anxious that I marry someone so maybe he would not mind? Lytton, I know, disparages Clive’s noisiness, his sportiness, his indelicate energy, his new money and vulgar house, but enjoys Clive’s company despite his complaints. Everyone enjoys being with Clive. In conversation, he is like the dancer who lifts the ballerina with great, invisible skill. He makes the lifted partner feel beautiful.

  And me. What do I think of Clive?

  I like him. But it stops there. I do not think I could love him. I remember Stella when she decided to marry Jack. I watched her with the critical eyes of a younger sister but I could find no flaw in her certainty. She was alight. She was sure. She recognised him. He was hers. She had been waiting for him. I do not recognise Clive. He is not mine.

  EVEN AFTER ALL THIS TIME I wait for Mother’s firm hand on the door handle, for Stella’s light, quick step in the hall. I keep my questions planted in a tidy hedgerow, in readiness for them. But now I am the sureness, the footstep, and the others keep their questions for me.

  FLOWERS ON MY DESK. They need not present a dilemma. They need only bloom, wilt, and go away. Dinner party tonight with George and Margaret at her parents’, Lord and Lady Carnarvon’s great house in Bruton Street. I am sure I will be seated next to—

  Much later (eleven pm)

  We’re back. No idea who I thought I would be seated next to. In fact, I was seated next to a red-faced, braying man whose name I can’t remember. I have no patience for these formal evenings any more. Tonight the butler stood by the door like a sentry and belted out the name of each guest upon arrival. That is how it was done when we were young, but now it strikes me as ridiculous.

  All the wit and laughter eddied around Virginia, at the other end of the table. She can be so charming when she chooses to be.

  I should go and help Virginia sort her seed pearls from her hairpins. Mother left her the four beautiful blue enamelled hairpins she always wore, and I am terrified Virginia will lose one. She always leaves her things in a tangle on the floor.

  4 July 1905—46 Gordon Square

  I had no idea Clive’s flowers had upset her so much. I thought if I brushed the topic aside, it would disappear like dust and Virginia would forget about it. I know she is terrified I will get married, just as I am afraid that Thoby will get married. As soon as one of us goes, the thing unravels and the whole of us comes apart. But I thought she would realise that Clive could never hurt us. I would not give the four of us up for Clive. How could I?

  I misread her mood yesterday.

  “Nessa!” Virginia banged the front door shut. “No, no, Sloper, I want to give them to her myself. Nessa!”

  “In here, dearest!” I wiped my hands on the old blue cloth and stood back to look at the painting. The nose. I hate doing faces—the inexactitude. Better not to define them at all.

  “For you.” Virginia held out a bunch of fresh-smelling wildflowers. “To replace those hothouse impostors,” she said, frowning at Mr Bell’s flowers in the blue vase.

  “They are lovely, dearest,” I said, taking the prickly bundle. Dirt still clung to the roots.

  Maud put them in the green glass vase.

  “Place of honour, Nessa,” Virginia said. And so Mr Bell’s flowers were moved to the windowsill. Wildflowers preside over my desk.

  A THURSDAY EVENING AT HOME

  Thursday 6 July 1905—46 Gordon Square (midday)

  The birdwatching party has returned. Thoby brought me one of his beautiful jaybird sketches, this one with a pale touch of morning blue on its wing. Now I have three bird drawings from him. A triptych.

  I want to tell him about Clive’s flowers, but the moment has passed. I put the card inside my copy of Middlemarch, and Maud threw the flowers away when they began to wilt. Hothouse flowers never last long. Clive is coming to Thoby’s at home tonight. I am worried I will be childish and awkward and avoid him. And—Virginia is finally wearing her new spectacles, turns out they were in the china inkpot on her desk.

  Later—4.15pm (guests invited for nine)

  “Nessa!” Thoby called from the bathtub. “Did you tell Sophie how many?”

  “I don’t know how many,” I said from my sitting room. After working on my Virginia portrait all day, I was cleaning my brushes. I rinsed the turpentine from the bristles as Thoby counted aloud.

  “Lytton, Lytton’s sister Marjorie, Lytton’s cousin Duncan, Lytton’s friend Mallard something, Bell, Desmond, Saxon, Hilton Young, Lady Ottoline, I think. What is that, n
ine, plus us?” Thoby’s voice was muffled, and I was sure I had some of the names wrong.

  “Mallard? Like a duck?” I asked, coming into the hallway to stand outside the bathroom door.

  “Duck?” said Virginia, running lightly up the stairway. “Did Thobs bring a duck home?”

  “No! For dinner tonight!” Thoby shouted from the tub.

  “You killed a duck! Thobs, you are only supposed to watch the birds!” Virginia shouted back.

  I knew she knew exactly what he meant. When Virginia is in a good mood, she enjoys hysterics. It is when she is quiet that one should be careful. The stillness that presages the squall.

  “If I had known you were going to kill wildlife,” Virginia continued loudly, “I would have hidden your shoes.”

  Thoby’s bath ended in defeat. I could hear his sigh of resolve and the thick thud of his book hitting the white-tiled floor.

  Later—five am

  They have gone, and I am too finely tuned to sleep. It all came off very well. Virginia was loose and laughing instead of taut and bright. She spoke earnestly to Desmond about the eleven new pens she tried this week. Virginia is passionate about good pens.

  Lytton’s cousin Duncan Grant, a gentle, observant sort of person, was a focal point. Without trying, he grounds, pulling interest and conversation to him like a cape. Lytton is obviously half if not wholly in love with him, and everyone else just wants to see Duncan made happy. When you meet him, his well-being instantly becomes your concern. Unusual that he can accomplish so much with so little effort.