Vanessa and Her Sister

by Priya Parmar

  Hampstead, N.W.

  London

  1 June 1908

  Dearest Mother,

  I must thank you again for the wonderful bulbs you gave us this spring. The lily of the valley have been magnificent. And now may I ask you for yet another favour? Would you mind taking the children next week? Mr J. P. Morgan has a commission for me, and Helen is not up to having them at home without me there. She is recovering well but slowly and still has moments where she does not recognise me and, worse, does not recognise the children. And then there are the voices always. We had another of the dreadful violent episodes last night, but thank God, it passed quickly. I managed to restrain her, but she still struck her head against the wall with a terrible force.

  I am so sorry to burden you with extra responsibilities. I only planned on going as far as Perugia this trip (to see about the Velázquez), but Mr Morgan has now asked me to bid for a Vermeer and a Hals held by a private collector in Rotterdam. I should be gone about three weeks.

  It is good to be working for the Metropolitan Museum again, even if it is only as an adviser. I have been finding myself at loose ends since I returned. Caring for Helen takes considerable energy, but beyond that, I feel stagnant. This Saturday, barring mishaps, Helen and I are taking the children to Guildford for a picnic. Do you remember the spot on the grassy hill where we flew kites with Father? Just there. She loves it there. I am wondering if I ought to take all my latent restlessness and hurl it into a grand project and build a house in the country? What do you think?

  All love,

  Roger

  PS: I have just heard from Burroughs, and the Trustees are delighted with the Leonardo da Vinci drawing I secured for them last month. We can learn so much from the sketches.

  2 June 1908—46 Gordon Square (late)

  A normal day. Clive has been working on his new article, and I worked on my still life in the morning and played with Julian all afternoon. Clive kissed my forehead at breakfast and talked about the new exhibition at the Grafton Galleries he wants us to see. I managed tea with sugar but nothing else. My stomach feels full of sand.

  Maud brought Clive’s ironed jackets upstairs, and I replaced the hairpins in the pocket where I found them. Ruffles of unease slip under my skin. Virginia wouldn’t, I tell myself firmly. I am being overly suspicious. It is not like me, and I must stop it. Because Virginia wouldn’t.

  Sunday 7 June 1908—46 Gordon Square

  (warm enough to have the windows open)

  Virginia, Adrian, Lytton, and Desmond all came for supper this evening. Everyone talked about summer travel plans. Now that the weather has turned, everyone is anxious to get away. Desmond and Molly are off to Scotland, and Lytton will travel on the continent with either James or Pippa.

  Clive and I will make our obligatory filial pilgrimage to Seend, and Virginia has decided to go to Wells alone to write. I don’t like her travelling by herself, but Clive suggested Wells, as that way we won’t be far, and we can all meet up for the day in Bath. And then at the end of the summer we will all go to Italy together. I want Venice, but Virginia and Adrian will want Florence. Clive will want to go to Rome.

  Irrationally, I was hoping to travel alone with Clive. Absurd, when I was the one who suggested Virginia and Adrian come along.

  Virginia was wearing her blue hairpins tonight.

  Monday 15 June 1908—46 Gordon Square

  “Bench? Shade?” Lytton pointed to the peeling black bench under the great plane trees. He has become monosyllabic lately.

  “Aren’t you meant to be writing today? Desmond says your review is due on Friday.”

  Lytton is writing regular columns (book and theatre reviews mostly) for the Spectator, and Desmond is editing the New Quarterly. It is shocking to have both of them viably employed.

  “It’s nearly done. Just needs polishing,” Lytton said, settling himself onto the low bench.

  “And by that, you mean you have not started?” I sat next to him, hooking my legs around the curved seat and wishing I had worn a darker colour, as I would surely get rusted paint flecks on my cream skirt.

  Out of unstoppable habit, I glanced over my shoulder at the house. It was semi-obscured by the bushy branches of the tall yew trees lining the wrought-iron fence that wraps the garden square. I do not know what I was looking for, as the nursery windows are high. I had wanted to bring Julian, but he was asleep, and I did not like to wake him. Lytton was quiet. He does not look well, and I am concerned about him. I will talk to Clive about it. Talk to Clive. Will that always be my instinctive reaction? No. Once it was to talk to Thoby.

  Lytton sat with his eyes closed, face upturned to the summer trees. I was also quiet. Silenced by a question I do not know how to ask. Perhaps there is no need to ask it? I know I have been distracted by Julian this spring. I know I have neglected Clive and Virginia. She is my sister, and he is my husband. The affinity is natural. I asked her to reach out to him. If Clive could not spend time with me, then of course he would look to Virginia. Do all new mothers worry about this? But all new mothers do not have sisters like Virginia.

  And—Damn. Adrian can’t come to Italy.

  Later (everyone asleep)

  Clive just went back to his own bed. I feel rumpled and warm and happy. I did not even mind when he left. He is used to it, he says. And I still get up in the night to check on Julian.

  We talked. I fell back into my habit of truth—unmitigated, brutal, blunt, and whole. It is the only thing that heals.

  What happened:

  Four in the morning, and I would not back down.

  “She is better read than I am.” I was lining up reasons for why Clive might prefer my sister to me. I was not sure why I had taken this tack, but it was too late to turn back.

  “But you understand art.” He moved closer to me on the bed.

  “She is better at conversation than I am.”

  “But you understand people.” He smoothed my hair from my face. “She is more beautiful than I am.”

  “No one could be more beautiful than you.”

  “But she is—”

  “You are my Vanessa. We are a family.”

  “Yes.”

  It was what I wanted to hear.

  Later (early morning)

  Yes, but it does not square up. Yes, but he never said that he did not love her. Yes, but I know what families are capable of. I hate this feeling of sifting for truth.

  Wednesday 17 June 1908—46 Gordon Square

  No breakfast again today but calmer. Sex repairs. But only for the moment. Together in our room, now my room, it was impossible to imagine, but in the raw daylight the picture slides out of focus, and I question everything.

  Clive and Virginia. Virginia and Clive. It flows more naturally than Clive and Vanessa. I sketched Julian in the morning sun again today and neglected my still life. Life at the moment is not still. It is moving very fast.

  Late morning

  I painted Julian in oils. Should start on my portrait of Irene Noel, but I only want to paint my baby boy. The neat, tucked curve of his small head. The tiny seashells of his fingernails. I talk to him as I paint. Everyone tells me that he cannot possibly understand, but I know that he can.

  Later

  I have finished my letters, played with Julian, planned the menus with Sophie, cleaned my brushes, and given my new box of handkerchiefs to Maud to be edged. A domestic day so far. I left instructions with Sloper and Maud that I was not at home (and if Virginia asked, because she always asks, I am at the hairdresser—nothing will keep Virginia at bay like the hairdresser). The bell rang twice, but I did not go downstairs.

  Doubts play in the thick trees but do not come out from hiding into the scraped bright day. I unstitch our conversation thread by thread. He did not say it was inconceivable. He did not say it was impossible. He did not say he could never feel such an emotion. I sent my questions flying over the net with long sure strokes, and he returned my forehand every time. That ought to make me
feel better. So why doesn’t it?

  Shocked. He was not shocked. That is the missing emotion. One ought to be shocked when asked about an affair with your wife’s sister. He was careful, urbane, logical. His reasoning was cooked all the way through, with no raw uncomfortable truth left red on the bone.

  After supper (Clive is reading in the armchair opposite)

  I have been a perfect shrew today. I picked a quarrel at luncheon and then refused a walk before tea. Clive is pretending that I am behaving normally, which only makes me behave worse.

  What did I want to happen? Why can’t I accept his denial? I have told him that no matter what has happened, we can get through it if he is honest with me. Do I mean that? No, probably not, but I said it anyway. I feel as though I will say anything to snap him into honesty, and then we can see where we are.

  I do believe truth heals, but sometimes only after it desperately wounds. It is a risky cure. Is that why I fight about the lemonade and the broken bicycle and the unposted letter and the bill for the grocer and the bad luck hat left on the bed? Because it is better than saying the things that cannot be unsaid?

  Marriage is a binding, blending thing that runs on a low-burning fuel of habit and faith. Love, on the other hand, is unanchored and lissome in its fragility. I pull a thread and then carefully weave it back into place, keen to keep the shape of the whole. The way I did when I learned of his affair with Mrs Raven Hill before our marriage.

  It is not in my nature to destroy. It is not in my nature to be suspicious. And so I will do nothing. I will accept his reasoning and her innocence and fold the episode into myself—where it can harm no one.

  It took so long to find this steady life. I lost each of my lives that came before. Each time the shattering blow on the slender new bone: Mother, Father, Stella, and each time the terrible business of piecing together what was left over. Rebuilding the broken pie crust and hoping the dough will stretch.

  But when we lost Thoby, I reinvented from scratch. I found something else. Something wide and new and safe. And it is all my own and so even more precious, and I cannot bear to smash it to look inside.

  Later (two am—the baby woke me)

  I tiptoed into Clive’s room after I got the baby back down.

  “Julian all right?” he asked, sitting up sleepily in bed.

  “Fine. He is asleep now.” I sat on the edge of the single maplewood bed. It used to be in the attic in Hyde Park Gate. Virginia and I hid from George and Gerald under this bed, I thought randomly. It creaked as I sat down.

  “Elsie can get him back to sleep. You do not need to get up yourself,” Clive said, rubbing my shoulder, his hand large and awkward. “You look tired, darling. You ought to sleep more.”

  “Yes,” I said, and lay down beside him in the narrow bed.

  Clive shifted uncomfortably. “Nessa?” he asked. “Are you going to stay?”

  “No,” I said kissing him. “I just came to say goodnight.” And I crept back to my own room.

  MR HEADLAM

  Thursday 18 June 1908—46 Gordon Square (ten pm)

  We were discussing our circle’s migration to the country. Morgan, Desmond and Molly, Lytton, Lytton’s sisters Pippa and Marjorie, Harry Norton, Virginia, and Hilton Young (at Virginia’s request) came for supper tonight, and we were all enjoying whisky and coffee in the drawing room after a simple meal of roast chicken and new potatoes. Adrian was at the theatre, so the numbers were uneven, but I don’t worry about such things now.

  “The country has a majestic quality,” Desmond said as I handed him his drink. “I prefer rural quiet to the busyness of London these days.”

  “You have just purchased a house in the country,” Lytton said, relighting his pipe, “and that renders you an unreliable judge. The country is lovely as long as one packs: good books, lively theatre, agreeable food, plenty of hot water, old friends, glittering conversation, and at least one like-minded Adonis to fall in love with—two to be safe.”

  “And so you ought to visit more often, as we have all that,” Molly said with a straight face. She has lightened considerably since she and Desmond married, and I have difficulty remembering why I found her so awkward.

  “Virginia, explain the poetry of a city to these country swine, would you? The music of a passing omnibus, the aria of the flower market?” Lytton teased from his basket chair.

  “Ah, but Virginia has been enjoying a more pastoral life lately,” Clive said, rising to hand Virginia her coffee. I noticed, too late, he had given her the chipped cup I had meant to throw away. “Where have you been this month, Virginia?” Clive asked, returning to his seat on the blue sofa beside me.

  “So far, Hampton Court, not really rural but not urban either; Welwyn, Kew, Dulwich, and Hampstead,” Virginia recited neatly. “And I have still made it back each night to get to the opera.”

  “Then you have had the best of both worlds,” I said.

  Later

  Siena is definitely on the itinerary, and naturally Clive is keen on Paris. He wants to see Matisse’s new painting Harmony in Red, as well as the Blue Nude everyone is talking about. I adored the nudes in his Le Bonheur de Vivre. Stunning shapes.

  I am voting for Venice and Florence as well but doubt I will have my way. Virginia is being contrary and says she does not care for the light in Venice.

  Three am (in the armchair by my window, can’t sleep, stormy outside)

  I watched more than spoke tonight, but I am comfortable that way. Clive, sitting beside me, also let the evening eddy around him without directing the currents as he usually does.

  Interesting developments: Hilton spent a long time talking to Virginia, and I saw Lytton watching them keenly. I sometimes wonder if Lytton would consider marrying Virginia? He is not romantically interested in women, but sometimes it seems as though he could fall in love with Virginia out of sheer curiosity. He has always been fascinated by her. Clive was also tracking the interaction closely but did not leave my side. How she rivets, my sister. Virginia’s conversation has taken on a hard, diamond brilliance. When did that happen? She plays to keep now: carving up the chessboard, fluent and calm. And each time the pieces move to defend their queen.

  Friday 19 June 1908—46 Gordon Square

  Tonight:

  “Do you mind it?” Lytton asked, shutting the tall windows against the rain.

  “Mind?” I asked, trying to find my glass from the many scattered all over the room. We had meant to have an evening alone, but Lytton called in after supper with James and Desmond, and then Virginia and Adrian popped by, and suddenly I was hostess again.

  Now, Lytton and I were alone in the drawing room. Desmond had left early to catch his train, and Adrian had left with James. Clive was walking Virginia home. I told him it would rain, but she insisted that it was just too silly to get a cab around the corner to Fitzroy Square. I did not mention that she often insists on a cab to Fitzroy Square. Her capriciousness is best left unquestioned if one wants to avoid a scene. Lytton stayed behind, his eyes semi-shut and his red springy beard resting neatly on his chest.

  “Yes, mind.” He calmly waited for my response and did not clutter the air with words we did not need.

  The question swung like a trapeze through my thoughts, threatening to kick open my carefully boxed-away fears. Did I want this conversation? Even with Lytton? Even with myself? No.

  My voice took on a challenging pitch. “Of course I don’t mind. Why should I? I would much prefer Virginia not walk home alone.”

  “No reason, my dear. Absolutely no reason at all.”

  Later

  I asked him, and he said no. It is enough. I refolded the question and tucked it back under the shelf of my swollen fleshy heart. No good comes of half-believing. I have decided to trust this man—to hitch my happiness to our life together. When did I decide to do that? My happiness was always drawn by painting before. Before, I was in love with being an artist. Before, I was not in love with Clive.

  Lytton is nat
urally wary of betrayal at the moment. It is the landscape he lives in.

  20 June 1908—46 Gordon Square

  Left Julian with Elsie and slipped out on my own for a peach ice at Buzzards. I sat in the shade and ate it slowly, feeling like a runaway.

  21 June 1908—46 Gordon Square

  Walter Headlam is dead. He was only a few years older than us. Clive rushed in to tell me. Apparently he went to the King’s College ball and a fellows’ party last week plus a cricket match at Lord’s, and then yesterday he fell down dead. I teased him for his hypochondria. He must have known something that we did not. Clive left immediately for Fitzroy Square to tell Virginia. I ought to have gone, but she will either be hysterical or cold—neither of which is sincere.

  Later

  “She was upset—her sensibilities are so fine—but not in love with him, thank God. Did you know she had refused him?” Clive was standing at the mantel in the drawing room. Agitated, he was finding it difficult to light his pipe.

  “I guessed, but did not know,” I said. On the fifth try, he lit it.

  5 July 1908—46 Gordon Square

  There was a small informal memorial for Walter Headlam today. I listened to Adrian and Virginia telling stories about our childhood summers at St. Ives. We knew him all our lives.

  ITALIA

  Monday 17 August 1908—46 Gordon Square (hot!)