Stephanie Barron

by The White Garden (v5)

  “But, Margaux—”

  “I can’t give you an opinion. I need more time. Look—what would be really ideal—what would help us all out—would be if you left this with me for a bit.”

  “A bit?” Jo repeated. It was a phrase the English seemed too fond of: elastic and conveniently vague. “I have to get back to London tonight. I have to leave right now. I appreciate your time—”

  Margaux was ignoring her, her liquid gaze fixed imploringly on Peter’s face. “If it’s honestly a Woolf, the stuff in this notebook will set the entire field of Modern English on its ears, Peter, you know that—”

  “Naturally! That’s why I brought it to you!”

  “And I’m immensely grateful.” She wrapped herself around him again suddenly, her lips lingering on his. “Delicious. So you’ll leave it with me? Just for tonight? I’ll look it over once more in the wee hours and hand it straight back to you in the morning, with my best possible judgment?”

  “Margaux—”

  “Smashing,” she breathed.

  So that was where Peter’d picked up the habit.

  Margaux stroked her long fingers through his hair, patted his head like a good puppy. “Meet me at the Queen, eight o’clock tomorrow. Café au lait. We’ll talk. It will be just like the old days. I’ll bring the notebook.”

  Without pausing for a no, she slipped the small brown binding into a Hermès tote idling by her desk, waggled her fingers at Jo, and gave Peter one last caressing look. “Until tomorrow, then. You’ll let yourselves out?”

  “I CAN’T BELIEVE YOU DID THAT,” JO SAID BLUNTLY AS THEY crossed the Magdalen quad a few minutes later. “My plans didn’t include Oxford tonight, Peter. I’ve got no time. There’s a client of mine waiting in London—”

  “Is that the bloke who tried to get you drunk in the middle of the morning?”

  She stopped short and glared at him. “Is that any of your business?”

  “Staying at the Connaught? Sending cars for his gardener? Buying a complete replica of the White Garden? I already loathe him.”

  “I don’t see why! You’ve never met Gray.”

  “Oh, yes, I have. He’s the sort who buys futures in Burgundy, my dear, merely so he can display the exorbitant labels in his climate-controlled cave.”

  “That’s not the point,” she retorted hotly. “The point is that he sent me here—I’m traveling on his nickel. My time is Gray’s own. And it doesn’t include an overnight in Oxford. I’m supposed to have dinner with him.”

  “Perhaps you should have thought of that before you contacted me.” Peter’s tone was unexpectedly savage. He was walking fast, now, toward the car park, where he’d left his old Triumph, his eyes on the ground and his interest in Jo absolutely zero. “You don’t open Pandora’s box in order to slam shut the lid. It doesn’t work that way.”

  “Are you talking about the notebook? Or that woman?”

  His steps slowed. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “It’s perfectly obvious you’d never pass up a chance to see Margaux Strand again. And my time and interests are being sacrificed to your… your…”

  “Crotch?”

  “I wasn’t going to say that.”

  “You didn’t have to.” He gave Jo an unexpected, defeated smile. “I’m hopeless around her, I know it. She’s had that effect on me for years. You’re right, Jo—I owe you an apology.”

  His sudden capitulation was unsettling.

  “You owe me the notebook and a ride back to London.”

  He shook his head.

  “Peter, I don’t even have a toothbrush. And I have no time. I leave England in a few days—”

  “But your notebook is temporarily unavailable,” he reminded her gently. “We’ll never track Margaux tonight—I know her habits of old. We’ll just have to hunt for a hotel instead.”

  THEY FOUND ROOMS AT THE OLD PARSONAGE, AN inn on the Banbury Road better suited to Peter’s tastes than either the Malmaison Oxford—a boutique hotel in a former prison, all neon and pulsing music—or the anonymity of a Best Western. Jo was beginning to realize that small details mattered intensely to Peter: the quality of what he ate, what he wore, where he slept. Authenticity was his touchstone. That explained a good deal about how he’d ended up at Sotheby’s.

  “They do a pub supper here that’s simple but brilliant,” he said as they parted on the stairs. “I’ll be downstairs in a quarter-hour, if you’re hungry.”

  She tried to evaluate the neutrality of this statement: Did he want her company? Or was he hoping she’d crash for the night, order room service (if the Parsonage even offered such a thing), and leave him free to prowl after Margaux? It was impossible to interpret the good manners of Englishmen. In a sudden fit of petulance, she slammed the bedroom door behind her and threw her purse on the bed.

  Her first call was to the Head Gardener’s office at Sissinghurst; she reached only an answering machine, and told Imogen she’d be back the following day, notebook in hand. Then she screwed up her courage and dialed Gray’s cell.

  “Where are you?” he said.

  It was his usual question, and the note of hope in his voice almost undid her.

  “Oxford.”

  There was silence.

  “I had to consult this woman about the Woolf manuscript. Or the one I think might be Woolf’s. And that meant a road trip.”

  “I see.” His tone was careful, now.

  “I should be back in London tomorrow,” she said, “and I’m not expensing this sideline, Gray. I realize I’m not on your time clock right now. I hope you don’t think I’m abusing the privilege of being sent to England—”

  “Cut it out, Jo. What’s going on?” There was a rustle as Gray sat down on what she presumed was his bed. “What is it, with this notebook?”

  “I tried to tell you earlier.”

  “That you’re a hopeless romantic?”

  “Not just that. Gray—I’ve never mentioned my grandfather. He… died… a few months ago.”

  “I’m sorry.” The automatic response.

  “He worked at Sissinghurst as a kid. I didn’t know that until I got here,” she added in a rush. “And when I found the notebook—it had his name on it.”

  “—On this book you think was written by Virginia Woolf,” he repeated, trying to understand.

  “Exactly.”

  “So your grandfather owned it?”

  “I don’t know. He’s actually in it. Like a character. Or… someone she met. Someone she knew.”

  “How is that possible?”

  “That’s what I’m trying to find out.”

  “Jo—” He sounded exasperated, now. “Isn’t there a better way to go about this than chasing all over the English countryside? Couldn’t you talk to a… book expert of some kind?”

  “That’s what I’m doing in Oxford, Gray.”

  He considered this. “Did I scare the hell out of you?”

  “Yes.” The word was out before she could stop it. “But I really meant to get back to London tonight. I wanted to talk to you.”

  “That’s all we do,” he said. “Talk.”

  This time, it was she who fell silent.

  “Look—I’ve got to go. Dinner. With a British fund manager. Can I call you tomorrow?”

  “Of course.” From your plane, she wanted to say, or your hotel?

  After that, Jo had no interest whatsoever in food. She called down to the bar for a glass of wine, drank it in the bathtub, and curled up in front of the BBC.

  THE QUEEN, AS MARGAUX STRAND HAD CALLED IT, TURNED out to be a coffeehouse on the High Street, shoehorned between Queens’ College and St. Giles.

  “Claims to be the oldest coffeehouse in England,” Peter confided, “but probably isn’t. And now that they’ve tarted up the place, it’s lost all character—might as well be a Starbucks. Used to be a claustrophobic hole. Did smashing fry-ups.”

  He glanced disapprovingly around the Queen’s interior, which Jo gathered had suf
fered an expansion at some point in the past two decades, then sniffed at his coffee in its trendy glass mug. “Used to be filtered,” he observed. “Now it’s Americano. Can’t think why Margaux bothers. Must be habit. Or convenience—”

  Neither habit nor convenience seemed to drive Margaux this morning, however. She had ordered them to meet her at eight o’clock—Jo distinctly remembered her saying eight o’clock—but as the coffee drained from their mugs and the croissants were consumed, the doorway remained stubbornly Margaux free.

  “Perhaps she meant nine,” Peter attempted, as half-past eight came and went.

  “I think she’s blown us off.”

  “Sorry?” Peter’s brow shot up, and his eyelids flickered; perhaps the phrase meant something nasty and sexual in England, Jo thought. But she was too furious to care at this point.

  “Blown us off. Skipped her date. Gone elsewhere for breakfast,” she emphasized.

  “Overslept, perhaps—”

  “Then it’s time we woke her.” Jo pushed back her chair from the table. “Know where she lives?”

  “Of course. I’ll just ring first.”

  He stabbed at his cell phone with nervous fingers. But Margaux, it appeared, wasn’t answering this morning.

  “Peter,” Jo said with an effort at calm, “that woman has my notebook. Where is she?”

  MARGAUX LIVED IN A VICTORIAN “TWO UP, TWO DOWN” terraced flat in a part of Oxford Peter referred to as Jericho, just outside the old city walls. The neighborhood was bohemian and chic, sought-after and expensive; a canal, lined with houseboats, bordered one side.

  “This is Hardy’s bit of town,” he explained, as though he’d known Thomas Hardy in his student days. “There’s even a pub called Jude the Obscure. Sort of an homage.”

  Jo knew little about Thomas Hardy, and cared less. As Peter tapped on the oak door, then walked gingerly around to Margaux’s front window, peering into the unlit room beyond, her anxiety mounted.

  “She’s gone, hasn’t she?”

  “I shouldn’t think so,” he replied with infuriating calm. “It’s a Tuesday. She’s got commitments. Obligations. Students.”

  “She’s got our book.”

  They stared at each other wordlessly. Then a window above their heads was thrust open.

  “Looking for Margaux?”

  The voice came from a curly black head now dangling over the sill. The face, Jo noticed, was unshaven, gorgeous, and about ten years younger than Professor Strand’s; what was visible of the body was unclothed.

  “That would be the commitment,” Jo murmured. “Or maybe just the student.”

  Something in Peter’s face changed. He stabbed at his glasses and called up belligerently, “Of course we’re bloody well looking for Margaux. She’s late for breakfast.”

  “Must have slipped her mind,” the youth said, grinning. “She was off early, this morning. Barely had time for tea.”

  “Do you know where she went?” Jo asked, fighting a desire to scream.

  The Greek god shrugged. “Couldn’t say. You can step inside. Leave a note if you like.—Half a tick.”

  He appeared at the door seconds later, his waist enshrined in a towel. “I’m Ian,” he told them cheerfully, offering his hand. “Classics. University College.”

  Peter had apparently decided to ignore him; Jo introduced herself. A cursory glance around the sitting room and kitchen beyond did not reveal the notebook.

  “I don’t suppose you noticed a small brown book anywhere upstairs?” she asked Ian. “Lying on a table, for instance?”

  “The Woolf manuscript, you mean?” He smiled. “She took it with her, of course.”

  “Where?” Peter’s word had the force of a bullet.

  “Didn’t say.” Ian tightened his towel. “Very cagey this morning, our Margaux. And now, if you don’t mind—I’ve left the bathwater running.…”

  “I’M SURE SHE’LL CALL,” PETER SAID FOR THE THIRD time, “once she realizes she missed us.”

  “Missed us!” Jo stared at him incredulously. They were walking in the direction of Peter’s old Triumph, which he’d left near the canal. “Ditched us, you mean. Lied to us, too. Margaux knew that notebook was written by Woolf—and she stole it, Peter. Put us off with all this garbage about further analysis, then lit out alone for God knows where.”

  “I’m sure you’re mistaken.” Peter stopped dead and whipped out his cell phone. “I’ll just try her mobile, shall I?”

  “Try away,” Jo muttered. She was suddenly aflame with impatience and frustration. She’d abandoned Gray—wasted time better spent on the White Garden—and embarked on a wild-goose chase across the Thames Valley. She’d wanted to make sense of Jock’s suicide. She’d been hopelessly stupid.

  “No answer,” Peter said miserably. “Quite unlike her. Usually picks up on the first ring.”

  “Right. But she can tell from her cell that you’re the one calling, so she’s letting you go straight into voice mail. And don’t say I’m sure you’re mistaken.” Jo strode on furiously toward the bottle-green Triumph. “I’m not mistaken. You’re willfully blind.”

  “You’re angry.”

  “Of course I’m angry!” She whirled and nearly stepped on his toes. “I’ve lost something priceless. Something important to me personally, as well as to the literary world. Never mind that it also belongs to Sissinghurst…”

  “I understand. But you don’t know Margaux. She wouldn’t just…”

  “—Run off with somebody else’s property?”

  “Not with a treasure of this magnitude. She has her scruples.”

  Jo rolled her eyes in disbelief. “You’re telling me that woman’s never left you standing on a curb before, Peter, while she pursued something more interesting? I don’t believe you. I’ve met the Boy Toy.”

  “There’s no call for personal attacks.”

  He drew his keys from his pocket and shoved them viciously into the Triumph’s door.

  Jo felt her face flush. “I’m sorry. It’s none of my business how often your friend’s betrayed you. But that notebook is, Peter. We’ve got to get it back.”

  He held open the left-hand passenger door silently.

  “You’ve got to get it back,” she persisted. “You know Margaux. I don’t. Where do you think she’s gone?”

  “Any one of a number of places. To verify a hunch, perhaps. Cross-check her sources…”

  “Sell to the highest bidder?”

  Peter’s eyes blazed. “Not that. Not yet. The fame of discovery is more Margaux’s line. She’d want the coup, you see. The headlines. The thirty-second spot on Sky News.”

  “So is she talking to the London press right now?”

  “I reckon that’s premature. She’s not hasty, Margaux. More of a calculating intelligence. She’d want to be absolutely certain before she went public with this. The cost to her career would be enormous if she got it wrong, do y’see? And if she talks to the press—she’ll have to tell them how the notebook was found. There are complications attendant upon that.”

  Complications.

  Sissinghurst. The Family. Jo.

  “Is it possible,” she began, feeling her way, “that Margaux’s searching for… something to authenticate the notebook? Something that makes the authorship unequivocal?”

  “—Like the other half, you mean?”

  They stared at each other. The missing pages, Jo thought, her heart beginning to pound.

  “Somebody cut those pages from the binding for a reason,” Peter persisted. “Perhaps they bore a signature.”

  “—Or the facts of Woolf’s death?”

  Almost involuntarily, he reached for his cell phone.

  Jo erupted in fury. “She’s not going to pick up, Peter! She must be miles away by now. Are you planning to stand here in Jericho until she parades across your television screen? Or are you going to figure out where she’s gone?”

  “All right,” he retorted, his palm slamming the Triumph’s window frame.
“I understand the problem, thank you very much. Now would you get into the bloody car?”

  Jo got in.

  IMOGEN CANTWELL LISTENED TO JO’S MESSAGE TWICE, stabbing hard at the answering machine’s buttons to rewind and play, before heading out into the garden that Tuesday morning. Sotheby’s, she’d said, and Oxford. Imogen felt a sharp thrust of anxiety that bordered on panic: This was all spiraling out of control. Jo’s absence was beginning to look like theft—and she, Imogen, was responsible.

  Terence was the first of her staff she encountered near the Powys Wall; he was clutching secateurs and hazel stakes, and was clearly bound for the Rose Garden. Sissinghurst closed for the season in five days, and Imogen felt a slight stab of nostalgia; Terence would not be returning when the garden reopened to the public in March. His internship was nearly done. Imogen had no great love for Terence, but she felt rather like a mother bird pushing her nestling into flight, all the same.

  “Morning,” he called cheerfully. “Just going to kick a few.” Which meant he would be shoving his booted foot at the existing rose stakes, elaborate architectural affairs known as “benders” over which the long canes of Vita’s old roses were trained in a circular fashion. If the benders snapped under the force of Terence’s kick, they would be replaced with fresh; if they survived, they would endure the wet and sun of another season. Terence loved kicking benders; it was a bit of garden hooliganism, of a sort other men reserved for rival soccer fans.

  Imogen doubted there were benders in Los Angeles. Poor Ter would be lost.

  “Is the American coming today?” he called after her. He rather liked Jo Bellamy. They’d probably pulled a pint or two when Imogen wasn’t looking.

  “Gone up to London,” she tossed back, and hurried on toward South Cottage before he could ask why.

  When the garden closed, Imogen thought, The Family would be much more in evidence. Sissinghurst was completely theirs during Closed months. And it was possible, Imogen thought, that the loss of the anonymous notebook might be discovered. That questions would be asked. That she would be blamed.