Sweet Sorrow

by David Roberts

  Charlotte looked rather hurt. ‘I don’t think it’s fair to say my books are about family squabbles. I try to write about more important things.’

  Verity did not hear her friend’s protest and continued her lecture. ‘During the last war, soldiers read in the trenches. In Spain, books and cigarettes were used as currency. Don’t forget that even in the most beastly wars, most of the time people sit around waiting for things to happen. War is a combination of boredom, fear and exhaustion.’

  ‘What about courage?’ Charlotte asked, still rather put out. ‘People are brave in war, aren’t they?’

  ‘Some people are brave but most just endure,’ Verity replied soberly.

  ‘Well, I’ve still got to finish the damn thing – the book, I mean. I’ll see you at Monk’s House around eight. Don’t dress up – it’ll just be us and maybe Byron Gates, the poet. Do you know him?’

  ‘I think I met him once, very briefly.’

  ‘Well, anyway, Adrian will probably insist on wearing his smoking jacket with paint on it and Leonard wears a moth-eaten corduroy thing.’ She looked at a pile of black cloth on the floor. ‘What’s that?’

  ‘It’s for the blackout. Colonel Heron dropped in and reminded us that, when war is declared, we’ll have to keep any lights from showing. He took one look at our curtains and said they were much too thin. Next week he’s expecting to receive a new batch of gas masks to distribute. It’s so awful. One can’t think of war when it’s like this – the sun shining and the birds twittering and all that.’

  ‘You don’t fool me, Verity. You are longing for it – the excitement . . .’

  ‘No, Charlotte, you are quite wrong. I saw enough of it in Spain to know that war destroys everything it touches. I hate it.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Charlotte said, realizing that she had upset her friend. ‘I shouldn’t have joked about it. You’re right of course. The truth is we’re all terrified of what’s to come but we have to put on a brave face.’

  Virginia and Leonard had bought Monk’s House in the summer of 1919 for seven hundred pounds. It was a modest brick and flint two-storey building – little more than a cottage – weather-boarded on the street side. As she and Edward strolled the short distance from the Old Vicarage, Verity wondered if their hosts would resent them buying a much grander house than theirs.

  They were let in by Leonard himself, although Verity caught sight of a maid bobbing around behind him. He was a gaunt, monkey-faced man with sharp intelligent eyes and a thin mouth, but his smile was attractive and she knew immediately that she liked him without his having said more than a word of welcome. He ushered them into a low-ceilinged, oak-beamed drawing-room apologizing for Sally, his cocker spaniel, who jumped up at them. Virginia rose to greet them and, holding out her hand to Verity, said how very much she had been looking forward to meeting her.

  ‘I read your reports from Spain and I was about to ask you to write a book for us when I was beaten to it by Gollancz.’

  The Woolves had started a small publishing firm called the Hogarth Press and Verity was flattered that she had even been considered as a possible author.

  ‘It was so kind of you to have sent me books when I was ill, Mrs Woolf,’ she replied. ‘Although, I have to confess, I would always rather be “doing” than reading. Still, being laid up for so long, I was able to do something about my education – or lack of it.’

  Verity found it almost impossible to take her eyes off Virginia. She thought she had never seen such a remarkable face, full of pain, lovely and remote. She became aware that she was being introduced to a handsome man in his early forties whose face she recognized.

  ‘Miss Browne – sorry, I mean Lady Edward – you won’t remember but we met at the BBC two years ago – Byron Gates. You were being interviewed about the war in Spain.’

  ‘Of course I remember. I didn’t know you lived near here until Charlotte – Mrs Hassel – mentioned it this afternoon.’

  ‘We’re just across the road from the pub – Ivy Cottage. Mrs Woolf was kind enough to find somewhere for me, my wife and daughters to take refuge. You must have come to the same decision, to leave London to the mercy of the Luftwaffe.’

  ‘I wouldn’t put it quite like that,’ Verity said, frowning. She did not like to be accused of running away. ‘My husband and I need a home – we never had one in London – but we shall both be away a lot.’

  ‘You are still hoping to be “in the thick of it”?’ Byron inquired a little patronizingly. ‘I thought you had been ill.’

  ‘I had a very light case of TB but am fully recovered. Your wife . . . she’s not here?’ Verity said to change the subject.

  ‘No, Mary’s in Hollywood making one of those pictures where they take our history and turn it into Technicolor tosh. Nelson and Lady Hamilton, Queen Bess and the Earl of Essex – you know the sort of thing.’

  ‘I saw Fire over England. Is that the kind of picture you mean? I rather enjoyed it.’

  ‘Yes, but it was tosh, wasn’t it?’

  ‘It wasn’t realistic but it carried one along. And your daughters . . .?’

  ‘Ada and Jean, my stepdaughter – they’re at home with a sitter-in Virginia found me. I really don’t know what I would do without her.’ Again there was that patronizing tone of voice with the implication that the distinguished novelist had nothing better to do than sort out his domestic affairs.

  ‘You mustn’t mind Byron,’ Virginia said, smiling indulgently. ‘He’s an intellectual and despises we “toilers-in-the-field”. You know, he not only sets the crossword in The Listener, which I find impenetrable, but he actually completes the monthly Greek or Latin puzzle.’

  Byron smiled smugly.

  At dinner, Virginia served a brown vegetable soup from a huge tureen, decorated she said by her friend, the artist, Duncan Grant. She was silent but watchful as she drank her soup – sizing up the new arrivals, or so Verity presumed. There was nothing luxurious about Monk’s House. The dining-room was small, the table narrow and unprepossessing, but the chairs, designed and decorated by Virginia’s sister, Vanessa, were comfortable. Verity found that she was trying hard to impress Virginia. She told herself not to be so silly. She must be herself – take it or leave it.

  Leonard and Edward seemed to be getting on well. Byron, rather rudely, Verity thought, broke in on their conversation to ask Edward whether it was true he was a private detective. ‘I ask because, as you may know, I write detective stories and it would be useful to study a real amateur detective at work.’

  Edward, attempting to hide his irritation, admitted that he had been involved in one or two murder investigations but absolutely denied being a private detective. ‘My wife is much more astute than I am about discovering “who did it”,’ he joked. ‘I have quite determined never to investigate another crime.’

  ‘And if there’s a war . . .?’ Byron inquired. ‘Will there still be anything for you to detect?’

  ‘There can be no doubt about it,’ Edward replied sombrely, ignoring Byron’s attempt to needle him, ‘war is coming. It’s only a question of when. As for murder, I should have thought that, by definition, there will be many thousands of murders but, as I said, I won’t be investigating them.’

  Verity was looking at Virginia when Edward said that war was inevitable and saw her rather sallow face go very pale and wished he would change the subject. Virginia must have seen that she had been observed and seemed called upon to explain her feelings.

  ‘You know about war, Lady Edward. It is terrible, is it not? I am by instinct a pacifist but I’m not a politician, thank God. I leave politics to Leonard. He spends hours with dirty, unkempt, impractical philanthropists at whom I’d throw the coal scuttle after ten minutes if I were in his place. I know he’s happy when I hear the drone of a committee meeting in the next room. Politics is Leonard’s hobby, his passion. Mind you, in my experience, nothing advocated by well-meaning literary men ever happens.’

  She spoke vehemently and Leonard
looked rather surprised and not a little hurt.

  Edward, trying to change the subject, said, ‘At Eton, you know, some of us played a ludicrous medieval football on St Andrew’s Day called the Wall Game. On St Andrew’s Eve, we feasted and passed around a loving cup. As we drank from it, we chanted “In priam memoriam JKS.”’

  ‘So I have been told,’ Virginia said more cheerfully. As Verity looked blank, she added, ‘J.K. Stephen was my cousin – a great classical scholar and footballer.’

  ‘And what happened to him?’ Verity inquired.

  ‘He went mad and died aged just thirty-three,’ Virginia said flatly.

  Verity wished she had not asked and her discomfort was made more acute by Byron’s next sally.

  ‘You are a Communist, aren’t you, Lady Edward?’ He spoke aggressively, emphasizing her title.

  ‘I was. I still feel a Communist at heart but I grew to dislike the Party’s slavish obedience to Moscow so I decided to hand in my card. In fact, I have just written an article for Revolt! on the Party’s destruction of the Anarchists in Spain. My Communism is, I suppose, closer to the socialism Mr Woolf preaches in the Political Quarterly.’

  ‘Please,’ Leonard interjected, ‘now we are friends and neighbours, I hope you will call me Leonard and, if I may, I shall call you Verity and Edward.’

  ‘Please do,’ Verity said smiling. She knew she would have no difficulty calling him by his first name but doubted she could ever call Mrs Woolf ‘Virginia’ – not that she had as yet been invited to do so.

  ‘Revolt! – what’s that?’ Adrian inquired. ‘It sounds sanguinary.’

  ‘It’s a magazine edited by George Orwell and Vernon Richards which discusses the Spanish Civil War from an anti-Stalinist point of view.’

  ‘I hope you get paid,’ Leonard said with a laugh. ‘I heard yesterday that it has folded.’

  ‘Yes, I know. I wasn’t paid, as it happened, but I didn’t expect to be. I much admire Mr Orwell and was glad to do what I could to help. I’m only sorry my offering didn’t make a difference.’

  ‘Did you read Orwell in Tribune?’ Byron asked. ‘In the “As I Please” column he called English intellectuals “boot-licking propagandists of the Soviet regime”. A bit unnecessary, I thought.’

  ‘Orwell was a contemporary of mine at Eton when he was called Eric Blair,’ Edward put in. ‘I didn’t know him well and I never guessed he would turn into such a remarkable journalist. I find I share his views on most things.’

  Leonard nodded in agreement. ‘I’m sorry, Byron, but I do agree with him that we were too quick to excuse Stalin’s political trials. One can see now that it was just state murder.’

  Byron growled a protest.

  As he carved a boiled chicken, Leonard said to Verity, ‘When you were recovering from TB, did I send you John Strachey’s The Coming Struggle for Power?’

  ‘No, but I mean to read it.’

  ‘I have a copy, if I can find it, which I shall be glad to lend you. Though it was written from a Marxist perspective as long ago as 1932, I think it still relevant.’

  ‘You did send me Iris Origo’s novel about Byron’s daughter, Allegra, which you published. Have you read it, Mr Gates?’

  ‘I have, as a matter of fact. Byron’s behaviour was quite inexcusable. He took her away from her mother out of spite and left her to rot in an Italian convent. I called my daughter Ada after Byron’s first legitimate daughter. She fared better. She was taken from him by his wife when she left him in 1816. Ada was only a month old and never met her half-sister. Unexpectedly, Ada became an accomplished mathematician.’

  ‘I didn’t know that. Is your Ada a mathematician, Mr Gates?’ Verity asked.

  ‘She’s a good girl but no one could ever call her intelligent,’ he replied dismissively.

  Verity was shocked. If she ever had a child, unlikely as it was, she knew she would never talk about her with such contempt.

  Leonard and Verity went on to discuss Lady Carter’s recently published book about women in prison – A Living Soul in Holloway – Leonard’s work towards disarmament and the failure of the League of Nations.

  Inevitably, Verity was soon talking of the Spanish Civil War which – as they spoke – was ending in victory for General Franco and the Fascists, or Phalange Party, as it was called in Spain.

  ‘You know my nephew, Julian, was killed in Spain?’ Virginia broke in. ‘And now it’s going to happen again. It depresses me so much to think of all our young friends caught up in something unutterably worse than what we went through in 1914.’

  Verity saw Leonard look at his wife with concern.

  ‘Yes, I met your nephew once and much admired him,’ Verity replied gravely. ‘Of course war is horrible but, like Lord Byron, I think Julian knew he was doing the right thing. It’s the same today. Any sane person hates the idea of another war with Germany but Hitler has to be withstood. Surely it is better to fight than be made a slave?’

  ‘You’re so like him – like Julian.’ Virginia put out a hand as if she would touch her but withdrew it. ‘Despite what you say, I still don’t understand what made him do it. I suppose it’s the fever in the blood of your generation which we can’t possibly understand. We were all conscientious objectors in the Great War. I was a great admirer of Senator La Follette, a much misunderstood patriot, and, though I understand the war in Spain was a “just cause”, my natural reaction would be to write against it.’

  ‘As I did,’ Verity interjected.

  ‘The moment force is used, it becomes meaningless to me,’ Virginia continued. ‘I’m sometimes angry with Julian but his feelings were fine, as you say . . . fine but wrong.’

  ‘His feelings were fine and right,’ Verity said firmly but, she hoped, not rudely. ‘And we must now fight again until Hitler is destroyed. It is the same war.’

  ‘But the bombing . . .?’ Virginia said faintly. ‘I’m so terrified of gas attacks . . . We’re giving up our house in Tavistock Square.’

  ‘To live here at Monk’s House, permanently?’ Verity asked.

  ‘No, a few months ago we bought a house in Mecklenberg Square and we are in the process of moving our things. We must have been mad to buy another house in London but, when we decided to move, we didn’t think war was coming so soon. In fact, in my more optimistic moments I still don’t think there will be war.’

  Verity could not believe that this highly intelligent woman could so delude herself but she said nothing.

  ‘London is a huge city spread over a vast area,’ Edward said, in an effort to calm her. ‘In my view, if war does come and I fear it must, the Luftwaffe will not be able to reduce it to rubble as quickly as people seem to think. Mr Churchill . . .’

  ‘You’re a friend of his, I believe?’ Byron interrupted. ‘I don’t trust him. He brought on this war by his posturing. There’s still time to make our peace with Germany. I don’t believe war solves anything.’

  ‘Your namesake fought for freedom,’ Edward couldn’t resist saying.

  ‘And died for it,’ Byron agreed. ‘What a waste! Great poets . . . great artists, great scientists are too precious to be wasted. Look at Archimedes – killed by a common soldier.’ He shook his head in sorrow.

  Edward wondered if he considered himself to be a great poet and rather thought he did. Unwisely, he was unable to restrain himself from quoting from Lord Byron’s last poem.

  ‘“If thou regret’st thy youth, why live?

  The land of honourable death

  Is here: up to the field, and give

  Away thy breath.”’

  Verity was embarrassed, fearing that Virginia would be upset, and said quickly, ‘Edward, how often have I asked you not to show off? Poets – with the exception of Wilfred Owen and Sassoon – have very little idea of the reality of war.’

  Unabashed, Edward again addressed Byron. ‘I have a rather odd link with Lord Byron. When I was at Trinity, I had the privilege of being lodged in his set of rooms. I’m told he kept a bear
which he would take out walking with him. Then, when I moved into Albany, I discovered that my set also once belonged to him.’

  ‘Byron had a fine time at Cambridge,’ Leonard put in. ‘In fact, I gather he lived a life of what must be called dissipation.’

  ‘He fell in love with a choirboy,’ his namesake said with a smirk. ‘He had wanted to go to Oxford – Christ Church, my college as it happens – but there were no rooms vacant so Trinity was second best.’

  ‘I think the only living creature he truly loved was his dog, Boatswain, a Newfoundland. It’s said that, when admirers asked Byron for a lock of his hair, he used to send them a curl or two of Boatswain’s fur.’

  ‘But what is important,’ Virginia said, as though she found the tone of the conversation distasteful, ‘is that he wrote wonderful poetry. “Fain would I fly the haunts of men. I seek to shun, not hate mankind. My breast requires the sullen glen, whose gloom may suit a darkened mind.”’

  There was a silence when she finished speaking. Her deep, melodious voice put an end to trivial gossip.

  When dinner was over, they moved into the drawing-room. The maid brought in a pot of coffee. Leonard put a record on the gramophone and, when they had sat down on an odd assortment of chairs, he lit a pipe while Virginia rolled a cigarette – a blend known as My Mixture. Adrian, who had said little at dinner, preferring to watch Verity and Virginia take each other’s measure, asked Leonard how he had enjoyed his French holiday. In June, he and Virginia had driven through Brittany and Normandy.

  ‘We very much enjoyed ourselves. Virginia is a great admirer of Madame de Sévigné and we thought we should visit Les Rochers and pay our respects while we still could.’

  ‘Oh, I do wish we could forget about the war for a moment,’ Charlotte protested. ‘We’ll soon have our fill of it. While we are still at peace can we not talk of peaceful things?’

  ‘Indeed,’ Leonard agreed. ‘Now, who of our neighbours have you met, Lord Edward?’

  ‘Please, I thought we had agreed that you would call me Edward. One of the things that made Verity hesitate before agreeing to marry me was the idea of being saddled with a title.’