by Priya Parmar
CEYLON (CYLAN)
12 April 1911
Kandy, Ceylon
Lytton,
I sail next month and should be with you by mid-June. I will take the first train to London and find you straightaway. We shall dine and we shall talk and it will be marvellous.
I am no longer afraid to meet her, Lytton. Instead, I feel an apprehension born of unfounded ironbound certainty. It is borrowed conviction, and it stems from you. I know very well it may dissolve into dust when your Virginia steps out of myth into flesh, but like a light left burning in a window, it has been enough to lead me home. Thank you for remembering to love me so well and so consistently. You have a rare gift for friendship.
Yours,
Leonard
PS: I find I am packing the things I love best, in case I never return.
HRH KING EDWARD VII POSTAL STATIONERY
15 April 1911—Hôtel d’Anatolie, Brusa
A strangely important day. It may be because we are in the hometown of the Olympian gods, but things feel weighted here. Predestined, foretold.
Today I lost the ring Clive gave me when we became engaged.
We spent the day as usual: Roger and I painting on a hillside, and Clive and Harry kicking about looking for ruins. We sketched a Turkish man and his wife in a palette of dark oils against the bright backdrop of a sun-whitened wall. I painted the wife, and she and I were delighted with the dramatic result. The sweet couple asked us into their home for tea and invited us to rinse our hands in well water. I removed my rings, including the pretty French antique engagement ring, and put them in my lap. I forgot they were there, and when I stood, the engagement ring fell into the long, deep well. The couple were terribly distressed, and the man fetched a pane of glass to try to see into the dark water, but it was hopeless. The wife burst into noisy tears.
I tried to calm the distraught couple and told them that it was all right and they must be sure to remember me when it surfaces one day, but when the wife understood that it was my engagement ring, she could not be consoled. When I turned to find him, Clive had slipped away.
16 April 1911—Hôtel d’Anatolie, Brusa
We have become a subdued group since the business about the ring. Clive did not mention it again, and neither did I.
Later—seven pm (in my room)
Came to bed early with a sick headache and fever. Worried I ate something I oughtn’t, but then the whole day has felt off.
18 April 1911—Hôtel d’Anatolie, Brusa
Ill. Dreadfully ill. Roger is here with me.
19 April 1911—Hôtel d’Anatolie, Brusa
Wretched. The doctor is coming.
20 April 1911—Hôtel d’Anatolie, Brusa (sunset)
It is still our hour to talk, but now we stay in while everyone goes out to see the sun set. Roger pulls his chair close to the bed. He twitches the sheet and straightens the blankets. I rewrap my dressing gown and smooth it tight. The tea grows cool in the cups. We do not want it. We do not bother. This is our hour alone.
Friday 21 April 1911—Hôtel d’Anatolie, Brusa
“London to Paris, Paris to Naples. Naples to Athens. And then the boat from Patras to Constantinople and the train on to Brusa,” Clive said, reading the cable. “She will be here by Monday.”
“Yes,” I said, resigned. I felt I had the energy to speak to Clive only in few words. Yes was less complicated than no.
And then Roger gently shooed Clive from the room.
He can do that. It is audacious, but he does not mean it to be. It is just a truthful recognition that Clive is not handling my sickness well. When Thoby was ill, Clive swooped in like a bureaucratic angel, organising doctors and specialists and servants and patients. As my husband rather than my lover, he has lost that kind, firm touch. He has forgotten the specifics of me, of us. Instead, hamfisted and melodramatic, he overplays it, and Roger will not permit theatrics when I am so ill.
Roger has come into his own. He sits with me during the day and sleeps in a chair by the bed at night. Calm and generous, he has shepherded me through my discomfort. It was a fever, most likely brought on by the water or something I ate. Not a terrible fever but frightening for a family such as ours. We know what can come of a fever.
Roger rises to the moment. He meets the world so beautifully. Our talk runs unbroken, like a vein of water under the ground, punctuated by sleep and deep, comfortable silence. Level and dignified, he tells me of his wife. He tells me of the callus that refuses to grow over his love for her. He tells me of his brief, mistaken affair with Ottoline. I felt a thin white current of jealousy, but it subsided when I realised that the intimacy it took for him to tell me about their affair trumped the fleeting intimacy he had shared with her.
And he tells me how he loves me. The first time, he said it cleanly and with pride. He loves me. I see that now. He says he has known from the beginning. From the day on the train. “It was in everything you did not say,” Roger said. “It was in the way you listened. It was the way you occupied a room. The way you held the floor without knowing it. You overwhelmed me.” His is not a light, airborne love. It is anchored deeply, resting comfortably on the sea floor. “It has only happened once before,” he said, gently sitting on the side of my bed.
Helen. There will always be Helen.
Later
We love but are not lovers. Moments appear, light-footed and indistinct, where we could manoeuvre into sex, but not yet. It is not time for that yet. I wait for his regret, his guilt, but it does not come. He is a man who always sees the good in things. And in his mind, love is always good.
REGRETFULLY YOURS
22 April 1911—Brusa
I asked Clive to cable and intercept Virginia. The English doctor says it is definitely not typhoid, but just a fever. He prescribed rest and toasted bread only. The local doctor also says it is a fever and prescribed rest and citrus fruit. It is agreed, I will recover. She does not need to come.
“But you need her to come. You need family, Nessa,” Clive said plaintively. I need to be nursed by someone other than Roger, he means. Clive looks at me differently. It’s not the hungry, thwarted look from before we were married. But differently. It is a regretful, lost look. I have seen this look on Julian’s face, when he puts down a toy and Quentin picks it up. That underestimation. Now that Roger loves me, Clive sees my value again. I am meaningful because I am loved by a man he respects. Carefully, gingerly, he plies me with affection. It is impersonal. It is too late.
ON A SWING
24 April 1911—Brusa
“Nessa!” Virginia called from the hallway.
She and Clive burst into my room. Roger rose to greet them. I watched Virginia do the sums in her head. She noticed everything: Roger’s chair pulled close to the narrow bed, his reading glasses on the nightstand, his rumpled clothes and unslept-in cot in the corner, my flushed cheeks and blue silk nightgown. But she does not know Roger well enough to muster disdain. Instead, she began to flirt. It is her instinct. It is not the keen-bladed intellectual taunting she employs with Clive. Instead she softened with Roger and grew coy.
Clive watched, woolly and confused, from the doorway as Virginia fussed and deferred to Roger. Roger was not flattered, because he did not recognise what was happening. Things that do not matter to him are invisible.
Later
The tables have turned quickly. Virginia snaps at Clive. She seeks only Roger’s attention. We all had supper on trays in my sickroom. Clive watched Virginia and me the way one watches a ship bearing loved ones pull away from the harbour. He seems to understand that it is over with them. I hope he understands that it is over with us.
Still later
They have all gone to look at the moon. Virginia was buoyant and elastic tonight when talking to anyone but Clive. This afternoon she told us about an evening she spent with Lytton last week. Leonard Woolf has taken ship from India and is on his way. Lytton has been dropping by Fitzroy Square to give Virginia daily bulletins. By today,
he is packed. By today, he is in Colombo. Virginia finds Lytton’s certainty endearing if a little strange.
“I feel like an Eastern bride who has been matchmaked. Is that a word?” she asked Roger, knowing of course that it isn’t.
“Lytton is perceptive,” Roger said. “You may want to consider it.”
Tuesday 25 April 1911—Brusa
“Yes, see the mosaics,” I said. “I will be fine.”
“Yes,” said Virginia, looking at Roger. “I would hate to miss them.”
I did not point out that the last time we were here she refused to see them.
“Nessa?” Roger asked, leaving the final decision to me. Virginia watched, envious. Clive sat quietly, his face difficult to read.
“Go,” I said.
Later (six pm)
Virginia asked Roger to take her to see the sunset, and Clive came to see me.
“Fever staying down?” he asked officiously, shaking the thermometer.
“I just did it, honestly. There is no need to do it again,” I said.
Clive sat in Roger’s chair. “Virginia seems well,” he said flatly.
“Yes.”
“Nessa,” Clive said, gathering himself like a diver from a springboard. “Nessa, I would like us to try to have a real marriage again.”
“Clive—”
“Please, let me finish.” He stood and began to pace. He thinks better when he is in motion. “I was careless and selfish, and I should have been happy with only you. I am sure I could be happy with only you.”
“Not Mrs Raven Hill?”
“Not Mrs Raven Hill.”
“And not Virginia?”
“There never was a Virginia, it turns out. It was you she loved. It is always you they love. I ought to have seen that,” Clive said, sitting heavily on the bed. “Roger sees it.” When cornered, he chooses honesty. It is one of his best qualities.
“We have our beautiful boys,” I said. “We have a happy life together. We have a modern marriage—just what you wanted.”
“Your answer is no, then?” Clive said, turning to it squarely.
“My answer is no.”
We sat together a long time, settling into the new silence of well-meaning friends.
27 April 1911—Brusa (early)
“Nessa?” Virginia said quietly, in case I was asleep.
“I am up,” I said, although I really wasn’t. “Where’s Roger?”
My first question. The corners of Virginia’s mouth swung together primly, like curtains at a play.
“Organising our visit to the river, I think. Do you need anything?” She stood and began fluffing pillows.
“Yes,” I said sharply. “I need you to leave him alone.”
“Who?” She sat quickly in the chair. Rapt. “Clive?” She was buying time.
“Roger,” I said, letting the name drift slowly to the ground between us.
“Dearest, I never …” Virginia laid her head on the bed, wanting to be pet.
“No, Virginia. Sit up.” I would not resume the foggy, affectionate animal habits until she understood. “You have been flapping about all week trying to pander to him, to flirt with him, even though he is oblivious.”
“Nessa!”
“No, Virginia. You ruin. You ruin whatever you see coming between you and me. Roger is not my lover. He is my friend, but that hardly matters. We have a fragile, particular friendship, and you will destroy it if you can. As you destroyed my marriage. You cannot help yourself. You do not want something of your own. You want what is mine.”
“But I thought that it was all all right now,” Virginia said desperately.
“No, Virginia,” I said. “You are my sister. It will never be all right.”
It will never be all right. I had not understood until that moment. An even tide rolls in with the certainty of fracture. The boat ripped to the keel. The anxiety over. The balance tipped. It can never be all right.
Monday 1 May 1911—Hotel Bristol, Constantinople
Train in an hour. We came back to Constantinople for two nights, and we are to take the Orient Express back to Paris this evening. Harry, Roger, Virginia, and Clive have gone to the bazaar to look for exotic fruit to bring back for the boys. I am parked in a deck chair on this sun-washed terrace overlooking the blue sea until they return. I do not mind. After the constant rumble and hum of travelling companions, it is luxurious to be alone. I am not waiting. I am not waiting for anyone any more. It was me I was waiting for.
Today I have the sensation of being on a swing, sailing high over the ground. Below, Roger is waiting to catch me in his warm, capable heart. Clive lounges against a tree and, if he thought he could, would snatch me from falling too far through the open air. Perhaps there are others waiting. Others watching.
But then, perhaps I do not need to be caught.
RESOLUTION
Saturday 5 October 1912—Grafton Galleries (early—seven am)
Opening day. The Second Post-Impressionist Exhibition.
Roger let me into the gallery. With long neat fingers, he traced the bones of my face, and, bending, kissed the soft patch below my ear, the spot he loves. And then he slipped away. He knew I wanted a moment alone. His deft understanding is my North Star.
Two rooms. My footsteps crack the velvet silence. Nursery Tea is bearing up well in a room full of Matisses, Picassos, Braques, and Cézannes. I worried she would look provincial and domestic in this company, but just as Roger insisted, I was wrong. She is holding her own. I close my eyes and say goodbye. I wish her well. In three hours she will no longer belong to me. Her brushstrokes will grow unfamiliar, and our history will be wiped clean. She will start fresh. That is what happens when a painting puts on her boots to meet the world. Duncan tried to explain that loss to me long ago.
Duncan’s jagged poster hangs in the window, announcing the exhibition. I have the early sketches he made for the design. Roger brought them over last week, folded and crumpled in his pocket. I smoothed them out under some heavy books. Clive wants to frame them.
Three hours. And then the crowds will come. They will be more prepared now. Last time they were taken wholly unawares by Cézanne’s stark mountains and Gauguin’s plush Tahitians. They were too startled to be urbane. They will try not to make the same mistake twice, but Roger thinks that Picasso’s cubist Girl with a Mandolin alone will stump up plenty of fresh outrage. I do not want to see that. The red faces and meaty fists. Roger can describe it to me later when we are alone.
In three hours, Virginia will be the first through the door. Leonard has been Roger’s secretary for the exhibition, and since last spring Leonard and Virginia do everything together. The Bells and the Woolves. There is a lovely symmetry in four. Before Virginia and Leonard married two months ago in a poky room at St. Pancras registry office, I could not quite see it. They seemed mismatched, like odd socks. Bound together by decision rather than affection. Leonard is so inflexibly good, so direct, so sincere, and so grave. Virginia’s wit frothed around him like a party dress.
The wedding day bulged with thunder and split wide with lightning. The sheeting rain washed the greasy pavement clean. Clive, soaked with misery at losing both Stephen sisters, hardly looked up from the salmon carpet as I sat with Julian and Quentin and watched the bride and bridegroom. Dear Leonard wore a sun-faded suit, as he could not afford to buy another, and Virginia spoke her vows in a voice too low to be heard over the storm. She stood willow-stripling straight, and hawkish Leonard curved towards her like a moon. All her life Virginia has been in terrible motion, as if she runs on the belief that there is always a better place to be. She charms and sparkles and binds us to her on her way, and she does not slow her pace. But standing beside Leonard, she gathered in one level grassy place, and I watched him tense with the lean, sharp hope that she would stay.
Now I see it. He moors her. He is Virginia’s to the bone. And someone needs to be Virginia’s. Perhaps it will change us. Perhaps she will grow safe, and I will grow trusti
ng. Or perhaps we will go on as we are: Leonard will wait for Virginia, and Virginia will wait for me.
I breathe in the freshly dusted room, the bold paintings, and the clear lights. The bell rings, the gallery door opens. Roger is back. I will stay to watch the first wave of people break over the gallery floor, and then I will leave.
“Ready?” he asks gently, careful not to disrupt the cathedral air around us.
“Ready.” I love being an artist today.
46 GORDON SQUARE
BLOOMSBURY
TELEPHONE: 1608 MUSEUM
5 December 1912
Dearest Ginia,
Now Quentin has caught Julian’s cold, and so I do not think we will be able to come down after all. Shepherding one drippy runny child to Sussex is a challenge, but two is impossible.
Yes. You are the woman in the painting. I can see you are different. I can see you are changed. Your happiness makes you supple and warm.
But you are on the far bank, Virginia. I am replanted in different earth now. Look for me. I will be watching you from here. You are my sister, and in that we are twinned always. But to begin again? No, Virginia. There can be no beginning again. The problem was never in the beginnings, but in the ends. It is the ends that are always the same.
Vanessa
AUTHOR’S NOTE
What became of them …
ADRIAN STEPHEN