Later he grew accustomed to the tentative expression Jo Bellamy wore whenever she was far from a garden; but that morning, as she hesitated in the café doorway, Peter took in the corduroy jeans, the mud-spattered Merrells, and the tied-back hair and concluded that an American tourist had lost her way between the Oxford Street tube station and Thomas Pink’s on Jermyn. Sotheby’s clients tended to dress for New Bond Street; they were careful to betray their ability to meet their financial obligations, before they breached the doors of the auction house. Whereas this woman’s appearance suggested she was in search of cab fare home.
As Peter sank his teeth into his final bite of pain au chocolat, however, the stranger met his eyes and smiled. His throat constricted from sheer surprise, and he gagged. Spluttering, he half rose from his table as she hurried toward him.
“Mr. Llewellyn? Are you okay?”
“Fine,” Peter gasped, peering at her through his glasses. “But I’m afraid I don’t… that is, I’m not sure — ”
“They told me I’d find you here,” she said. “Table in the corner, pastry and tea, blond hair and glasses. I’m Jo Bellamy. Would you have a moment to talk?”
Peter cleared his throat, released the death grip he’d fastened on his napkin, and gestured toward the opposite seat. “Do sit down. Cissy sent you, I suppose?”
“Cissy?”
“Department coordinator.” He sketched vaguely at his necktie. “Pearls. Twin set.”
“How did you know?”
“The rest of the Department will be in a meeting. I’m playing truant.”
“I see.” She smiled again as she pulled out her chair, and absurdly, Peter’s heart raced. He ought to have drawn the chair for her. But perhaps Americans ignored such things. And he was too late, in any case.
“How may I help, Miss…?”
“Bellamy.” She slid a large leather shoulder bag to the floor. “I don’t really know. I’ve never done this before. I’m not… good at things like auction houses.” She glanced around the café apprehensively, as though an alarm might go off; the tentative look was back again.
“You’re at a breakfast table, not a preview,” he said dryly.
“Right.” She drew a breath. “I found something. Something that might be important. Only I don’t know. And it’s not even mine. In fact, I stole it.”
Peter’s eyebrows soared. It was not unknown for the more audacious of fences to approach the house with suspect goods; it was not unknown for fakes — art, jewelry, anything of value — to be passed off as original. But such tactics were rarely shouted out loud.
“Sorry?” he said.
“I’m not explaining this right.” She blushed and slid a hand over her hair, as though it helped her to think. “Cissy said you were a Manuscript Expert.”
“That’s a job title here,” Peter explained. “It means I sell rare books. In your country, they’d probably call us Specialists.”
“Fine.” She dismissed job titles. “But can you figure out the identity of an author from just the handwriting? If the manuscript’s unsigned, I mean? And how would we do that? — Identify it as Virginia Woolf’s, say? — Or rule her out entirely?”
“Hang on.” Peter raised his thin hands above the table. “What in bloody hell are you on about?”
“This,” she replied, and withdrew a shabby notebook from her bag.
Peter did not immediately take it. Woolf. She had said Virginia Woolf.
“We could, in time, do all manner of things,” he said cautiously. “But what exactly are you requesting? A valuation? Manuscript analysis? Sale to the highest bidder?”
“Not that,” she said, alarmed. “I told you — this isn’t even mine.”
“Then any request for service should properly come from the owner. We’d require certain information, obviously, before we could entertain — ”
“But I don’t have information. That’s why I’m here. I’ve got to find out if it was her. And I’m running out of time — ”
Peter sat back in his café chair and glared at her. “Miss Bellamy, you’re not making a good deal of sense.”
“I found this notebook at Sissinghurst,” she said wearily. “And I think it was written by Virginia Woolf.”
She set the shabby volume on the white tablecloth between them.
Peter opened his mouth, closed it again. He adjusted his glasses. Then he skimmed the notebook cover with his fingers as lightly as though it were the face of a child.
“One doesn’t just find things in National Trust houses,” he told her quietly. “Not after they’ve been open to the public for forty years.”
“It was in a tool shed with some stuff of the gardeners.”
“So?”
“The gardeners’ books weren’t turned over to the Trust per se. They were passed down. To the current head.”
Peter frowned at her suddenly. “To whom does this belong? The gardener? The Nicolson family?”
“It should belong to whoever wrote it, right? Or if… she’s dead… then, to whomever she gave the book…”
“Are you attached to Sissinghurst in an official capacity, Miss Bellamy?”
“Not at all.” There it was — the smile, impish and uncontrolled — and the worry drained immediately from her face. “I’m a gardener myself. But visiting, from the States. I should never have seen this.”
“Then why — ”
“It’s a long story. Please.” She pushed the notebook toward him. “Could you just… look at it?”
He did not immediately answer her. Lifting his glasses slightly from the bridge of his nose, he peered intently at the binding. Cheap, medium-brown cotton over boards, the leaves glued rather than sewn. Size, roughly five inches by eight. A school copybook, perhaps of the last century. He lifted the cover, searching for a manufacturer’s imprint: Gould & Tennyson, Liverpool. He had been avoiding the handwriting itself, on the title page, from fear of disappointment —
Notes on the Making of a White Garden.
It might just be Woolf’s, at first glance: the looping, hurried script, certain of the letters elided. It would have to be studied, of course. Compared with known samples. Analyzed —
He glanced at Jo Bellamy, who was looking from the notebook to his face with the eagerness of a puppy.
“Why Woolf?” he demanded. “Merely because she knew Lady Nicolson?”
“Because of the writing,” the American replied.
Peter snorted. “Are you going to tell me it’s haunting and lyrical?”
She shook her head. “It’s… insane, actually. Very difficult to understand, in places. I’m not even sure if it’s fiction or a diary.”
“Rather like most of Virginia Woolf, now that you mention it.”
“Exactly!”
They grinned at each other; then Peter’s smile faded.
Marcus Symonds-Jones was looming in all his sartorial glory in the café doorway. He wore his most sympathetic and sensitive look, the one reserved for particularly splendid clients; beside him stood Julian Browne, solicitor for the Broadwell family. Whose priceless collection of bound volumes Peter was supposed to be cataloging.
“Look,” he told the American as he rose hurriedly, “can you leave this with me for a bit? I’m afraid I’ve got several pressing engagements this morning, and it won’t be possible to — ”
“What do you mean by ‘a bit’?” she countered. “I’ve only got a few hours. I’m returning to Kent this afternoon.”
“Fine.” Peter’s napkin drifted to the floor beside his chair; out of the corner of his eye, he could just make out Marcus and the Broadwell nightmare being led to a table at the far end of the room. The doorway was cleared for escape. “You’ve a mobile number, yes? You’ll leave it with Cissy? Know some shops to look into? The V&A, perhaps? Or — you’re a gardener! There’s always Kew!”
He was nearly out of the café by this time, notebook clutched in his hand; Jo Bellamy looked bewildered, the beginning of alarm on her face. H
e read the signs — she ought to have got a receipt, what if he absconded with her treasure, which wasn’t even hers — but it was too late to reassure her; she would just have to take Peter Llewellyn, Manuscript Expert, and the hallowed Sotheby’s firm on faith. She would have to wait for his call.
He ducked into the loo conveniently positioned just off the café corridor, and with relief closed a stall door behind him. That made twice in one morning he’d avoided Symonds-Jones. His need for flight — the revulsion driving him from every room his Department Head entered — could hardly be healthy. But he’d experienced a sudden horror at the thought of Symonds-Jones fingering Jo Bellamy’s notebook. Symonds-Jones’s uncouth vowels pronouncing the elegant little title. Symonds-Jones drawing Jo Bellamy’s impish smile. Absurd. How had things come to such a pass?
A square of milk glass set into the ceiling — an old-fashioned skylight — cast a grayish halo over Peter’s stall. He stared up into the glow, wondering if he’d gone slightly off the rails during the past few months. It was due to the place, he reckoned. The expectations. The persistent sense of inner failure. And Margaux’s leaving hadn’t helped. He would not think of Margaux, the annoying cow.… He hadn’t been born for this — for the title of Expert. Passing judgment on other people’s passions, other people’s sins, their hoardings and jealousies and impossible dreams. He would have to get out before he was much older.
But first: the Broadwell collection.
He slipped the old brown notebook into his breast pocket, flushed the loo for the sake of appearances, and prepared to brave the corridor once more.
JO BELLAMY WAS ALREADY TRYING ON WOMEN’S DRESS shirts at Thomas Pink’s, Jermyn Street. They looked, she thought, like the sort of thing Gray Westlake would wear. But not his wife. Perhaps his mistress…
Mistress. What a hideous word.
She was holding a lavender stripe under her chin when her cell phone rang.
Chapter Eight
“ARE YOU IN THE GARDEN?” GRAY ASKED.
Jo nearly dropped the phone. Although barely half an hour had passed since leaving Sotheby’s, she had expected the voice to be Peter Llewellyn’s.
“No,” she said abruptly. “I’m at Thomas Pink’s. It’s a store.”
“I know. So you’re in London?”
“Just for the morning. I took the train up.”
“You must’ve guessed I’d be here.”
The lavender-striped shirt slipped from Jo’s hands. Clumsily, she bent to retrieve it. “Gray, you didn’t.”
“I did. Want me to send a car for you?”
“No! I mean — where are you, exactly?” She shoved the slim wooden hanger back onto a rack, aware that she sounded distracted — unwelcoming — actually put out about this delightful surprise. “It’s just that I’m shocked. I never thought you’d really — ”
“I’m at the Connaught,” he interrupted, that faint ripple of amusement in his dark voice. “Don’t move. I’ll find you.”
She stood there for an instant in the middle of Thomas Pink’s. Panic washed over her. Gray. In London. Which meant —
He had flown in from Buenos Aires to see her.
For one wild instant, she wished the call had been from Peter Llewellyn. But that was nonsense. She closed her cell phone with a snap and went out into the street to wait for the car.
IT WAS A BLACK BENTLEY. PRESUMABLY THE CONNAUGHT owned it, and lent it to people like Gray when they had to fetch their mistresses from London shops. A chauffeur stood by the open rear door; he was better dressed, Jo reflected, than she was.
“Look at you!”
Gray swarmed out of the backseat. His hand was at her elbow, his lips brushed her cheek. A current of energy ran up her arm. He looked so good — so alive and intensely exciting — when he ought to have been dead tired. How long was the flight from B.A., anyway? But she was forgetting. He owned a jet. One of those things with plush seating and Porthault sheets. He might as well have been sleeping in his own bed at home.
With Alicia, said a voice in her mind.
A slight pressure in the small of her back; he was sweeping her toward the car. It was inexorable. It was unnecessary for her to make a decision; everything had been determined for her. That’s how life with Gray was.
Her cell phone vibrated gently in her hip pocket. She ignored it, and got into the car.
“SO WHY DID YOU LEAVE YOUR CASTLE?” HE DEMANDED, once the butler had poured them each a drink and left them alone in the suite. It might have housed ten; Gray had taken it indefinitely. It was possible he’d be there for a week; possible he’d leave tomorrow. Jo sensed that his decision depended upon her.
“Do you really want to know?”
“I don’t ask idle questions.”
That was true. It was one reason he haunted her — words were rarely wasted around Gray. But they had talked only of gardens for so long; talked of possible paradises, their words a foil for deeper things. They had been groping toward each other, Jo realized, in all those months of planning walls and beds and flowers for different seasons — walking the Long Island acres in the rain, they had been imagining an Eden, their own private landscape. Talking about her grandfather, now — that was different. Jock was reality. How would Gray regard a man who’d fixed tractors for a living?
“I found an unsigned notebook I think was written by Virginia Woolf,” she told him. “I brought it to London to be analyzed.”
“That’s bizarre.” He took a sip of wine, studied her over the rim of the glass. “People don’t just find lost Woolfs. She’s a known quantity. Was it in an antiques shop?”
“A tool shed at Sissinghurst.”
“That’s even weirder. And you think it’s a Woolf because…?”
“Because I’m a hopeless romantic,” she replied unexpectedly.
Gray set down his glass. He leaned toward her, his arm reaching along the back of the sofa to caress her shoulder. “Liar. You’ve never worn pink in your life.”
“What’s that got to do with it?”
“You wear brown and green and deep russet red,” he went on, ignoring her question. “You know where snakes live, and lichen grows. You’re a mushroom hunter and a witch of possibility. You make things bloom, Jo. You’re utterly without shit or pretense and that is why I’m falling in love with you.”
“Gray — you’re not — ”
“I am,” he said. No laughter in his face now; no heavy-lidded desire. Only something like pain; and that, Jo thought, was terrifying. She did not want to cause Gray pain.
“Don’t,” he suggested, as she looked at him confusedly, “mention Alicia.” And then he pulled her close and kissed her.
It was inevitable, Jo thought, from the moment she’d taken Gray’s call in the middle of shopping; or perhaps it had been inevitable from the day they’d had coffee alone together, and she’d found him finishing her thoughts before she’d spoken them. As his mouth searched hers in the London suite, she could see the next few hours unroll like a predictable pageant: the intensity of lovemaking (his breathing was already faster as his hand slid over her shoulder), the dining table wheeled into the disheveled room by the discreet and wooden waiters; the champagne, the bathrobes, the steaming tub for two. It would be shocking and exhilarating and more dangerous than anything she’d ever done. And then she would awake the next morning and know that she had destroyed something important — not Gray’s marriage, that was his own problem — but something harder to describe. Her self-possession?
What happened to business owners who slept with their clients? What was more important — Bellamy Design, or Gray Westlake?
His fingers tugged at the elastic gripping her hair, loosened her neat ponytail, sent brown strands cascading over her shoulders. For an instant, his eyes studied her, and Jo felt a surge flow upward from her heart: half fear, half desire. Then her lips quirked suddenly in a smile. She couldn’t help it.
“Do you always seduce your hired help, Gray?”
“W
hat?”
“Is it noblesse oblige?” she mused. “Something rooted in your earliest ancestors — boinking the serving girl on the back staircase?”
“Jo, don’t,” he said quietly. “You’ve never been hired help. You’re my true north.”
But she had begun to question herself, and there were too many interesting answers for a mindless plunge into passion. “Gray,” she said briskly, “I’d like some time to think.”
“Shit.”
He let her go, his face a mix of puzzlement and frustration. Very few women, Jo imagined, were immune to the sort of triple-barreled assault Gray Westlake could bring: All that charm. All that power. All that money. She knew she was foolish. She’d probably lose Gray as a client anyway — so why not lose her heart?
Her cell phone vibrated again.
She reached for it, hair sliding into her eyes. Her blouse had come undone and her shoes were scattered. She discovered she was impatient with it all.
“Miss Bellamy?” said a cautious British voice in her ear. “Peter Llewellyn here. I’ve finished with your notebook.”
She glanced at Gray; he was raking his fingers through his dark hair, that look of pain in his eyes again.
“I’ll be right there,” she said.
Chapter Nine
29 March 1941
Sissinghurst
WE WALKED IN THE GARDEN AFTER DINNER, QUITE late, the Priest’s House lowering behind us, no flicker of fire or golden lamp escaping its heavy blackout shades. Vita still talks of bombing runs. She has no idea why I’ve ceased to fear the Germans.
“Do you see him?” she whispered. She was wrapped up in her sables, her nose emerging from the sumptuous collar like a ship’s prow. “He” was a member of the Home Guard, posted nightly in the height of her tower. A spotter. A lookout for the sudden flower of parachutes over the hop fields; for Nazi troop planes vomiting men. How perfect, I thought, as I squinted up at Mr. Home Guard, the band on his arm, the inverted pie-plate of his hat. How perfect that Vita’s tower should have its sentry posted once more. The tower and Orlando have been waiting for the enemy all these long years since Elizabeth; waiting for conquest, and night watches, and the Defence of the Realm.
The White Garden: A Novel of Virginia Woolf Page 6