Sweet Sorrow

by David Roberts

  ‘And will again,’ Edward said fervently.

  ‘If I believed in God, I would thank Him for it but, since I don’t, I must thank you, my dear,’ she said, kissing him.

  At eleven Edward, with a heavy heart but trying to look and sound cheerful, prepared to drive her to the station. Her luggage – and in the end there wasn’t much of it – was loaded into the Lagonda. Charlotte and Adrian had come to see her off but had tactfully left Edward and Verity together in the house to say their final goodbyes in private. They stood in the hall and looked at each other, suddenly at a loss for words. When would they meet again? was the unspoken question. Verity wiped away a tear. Edward held open his arms and she came to him as bravely as she could.

  ‘Nunc dimittis’, he said in her ear, and his voice betrayed him.

  She put a finger to his lips. ‘If you dare say anything about parting being such sweet sorrow, I promise you I will dissolve into a puddle on the floor. We have said everything and not even your beloved Shakespeare can say it better.’

  Edward managed a smile and let her go. ‘I shall say not another word, I promise you,’ he managed.

  ‘Then come, husband,’ she said, smiling up at him, and together they walked out into the sunlit garden.

  Note

  Virginia Woolf drowned herself in the River Ouse on 28 March 1941.

  For those interested in the dangerous sport of night climbing, The Night Climbers of Cambridge by ‘Whipplesnaith’, first published in 1937 and republished in 2007 by Oleander Press, is essential reading. It recounts the courageous – or foolhardy – nocturnal exploits of a group of students who climbed King’s College Chapel among many other university and city buildings and whose exploits prefigure the modern urban sport of ‘Free Running’.

  I am most grateful to Richard Reynolds at Heffers for bringing the book to my attention and reading my ‘Cambridge’ chapters.

  And finally, in September 1939 it was Randolph Churchill – not Lord Edward Corinth – who was ordered to board HMS Kelly (Lord Louis Mountbatten commanding) at Portsmouth and proceed to Cherbourg to bring the Duke and Duchess of Windsor back to England.