The White Garden: A Novel of Virginia Woolf

by Стефани Баррон

  5 April 1941

  I was up with the light this morning, knowing full well how Mr. Harold is when he’s down for his two days, wanting to dig in his bit of garden. He was before me, all the same, smoking his pipe on the steps of the Tower, which is sandbagged and barricaded by the Home Guard and even Miss Vita barred entry. Very natural Mr. Harold looked, a proper gentleman in his old tweed jacket and flannel bags, and the smoke curling about his head. He bid me good morning, and said something about the beds in the Lime Walk, and I made to move on, me hoping to thin the peas, when he said, You did well to come to Mrs. Nicolson the other night. If anything like that should happen again, be a good lad and do the same, won’t you? And I said as how I hoped the Lady was faring better. He said I am sure we shall have her on her feet in no time. And then — for the life of me I couldn’t say why, or what moved me to do it — I says, very bold like, I hope as her book is kept safe. She was that worried about it.

  Mr. Harold takes his pipe out of his mouth and looks at me as though my face had gone blue. Quite safe, he says. Provided no one talks when they shouldn’t.

  I hope I know how to keep a secret, I says, on my dignity; and how to value the trust of my betters. I pick up my barrow and turn for the kitchen garden when Mr. Harold says, I have set an angelic host around it, and lifts his pipe to the sky.

  I gave no sign I knew what he meant. But it’s clear as daisies. He’s hid the book in Miss Vita’s tower, where nobody can come nigh it.

  I felt better after that. The two of them worked in the garden, and at tea time the Lady took a stroll among the roses, which is just starting to leaf. There was colour in her cheeks and no wildness about her looks and I thought, No harm done that I can tell.

  Until bedtime, when she came looking for me again.

  JOCK, SHE WHISPERED, STANDING RIGHT OVER ME so I was scared half to death. Jock, you must help me.

  What is it? I says, sitting up with the sheet to my neck.

  I can’t stay here any longer. If I stay here I shall die.

  Now, ma’am, I says, don’t you think you ought to speak with Miss Vita?

  Please, Jock, she says. I’ve no one I can trust. Please help me.

  I asked her to turn around while I pulled my clothes on and then I got her back down the stairs as fast as I could. It not being seemly for a lady of her quality to be up in a hayloft.

  Ma’am, I says, the only way I can help you is if I call Miss Vita now. Or Mr. Harold. You must know how it is.

  Call Miss Vita and you will kill me, she says.

  I tried to speak, but no words come. There was something in her eyes — that look like a cornered animal — that made me listen. She was terrified of Miss Vita and Mr. Harold. I was sending her for help to the very ones she feared.

  Lord, ma’am, I said. Whatever is amiss?

  They’re good people, she said, but they don’t understand. I place them in danger the longer I stay here. I know things I shouldn’t. They’re like children, they don’t see the risk. They’re supremely unconscious. They write letters to men who put guns to people’s heads.

  Wild talk, and none of it any sense. What danger could such an old lady know? But I saw as how she was that scared. It was like throwing her in gaol, to call for Miss Vita.

  Keep her talking, I says to myself. Keep her talking a while, and maybe one of them will hear. Maybe they’ll come for her. And you won’t have to do nothing.

  I need to get to London, she says, like a woman in a fever. As quick as may be. You could take me now it’s dark. In the pony trap. I’d go myself, only I don’t know how to harness the pony.

  The missus can’t spare me for so long, I said. Nor the trap for so far a trip as London.

  Then take me to the station, she says. I don’t mind the wait. There will be a train soon enough. Please, Jock.

  And she holds out a guinea, and presses it in my palm.

  Now, ma’am, I says, there’s no call for that.

  Take it, she says. With my thanks.

  So I harnessed the pony. He didn’t half like it at that hour of the night, neither. And we set out in the darkness, me driving slow as slow and hoping all the time that Mr. Harold would hear the sound of the trap wheels and come shouting after. But he didn’t. The South Cottage where they sleep is far enough from the cow barn. Only the Home Guard in the tower, maybe, saw us go; and it’s not his place to sound an alarm for anything but Germans.

  A chill night, and no moon. Close to midnight, maybe. There won’t be a train until half six, I told her. She asked how long the drive to the station would be. Maybe an hour, I says. You’ll have a fair wait, in Staplehurst.

  But as it happened, we never got so far.

  Just past the hillock near Cranbrook Common there was a car. A big, black monster with no running lights on account of the blackout, driving fit to bust. The road’s tight as a glove and the hedges high and the beast was on us before we knew what we were about. I doubt the driver even saw us before he hit, his big black fender taking the side of the trap at a mad clip, the pony shying and plunging, and me without a prayer of saving us. The Lady screamed and clutched at my arm but it was no good, the whole trap was over, and the poor horse caught in the traces and screaming, too.

  I was tossed in the hedge when the trap overturned, and took a knock on the head; lucky, I suppose, not to break my neck. But it took me a moment to get up and when I did, I saw the car had stopped. There were gentlemen in proper long coats and trilby hats and dark gloves, and they’d got out of the car to see what was amiss. But the pony was my job; lying on its side, legs kicking, and that awful screaming. I went to its head and felt in my pocket for my knife, to cut the traces — but I’d forgot the knife in my room back home. I tried to soothe him, thinking if he was calmer I’d be able to get the harness off him. One of the gentlemen came over to help. Sat on the horse’s head while I worked the straps. Unpleasant, he was — What kind of fool drives a gig at this hour of the night? he asks, impatient, like I’m the village yokel that knows no better.

  The Lady had to reach the station, I says.

  We’ll take her on, he tells me, as I free the horse and get him onto his knees. It’s the least we can do.

  I saw, then, that another of them had her by the arm and was half-carrying her to the car.

  Ma’am, I called out. Ma’am, are you all right?

  But she made no answer.

  Fainted, the fellow next to me said. But she’ll be fine. Sorry for your trouble. And he shoves a pound note in my hand.

  The pony was dead lame. I had to leave the trap and walk him home, a mile or more.

  I WENT STRAIGHT TO SOUTH COTTAGE WHEN I GOT there and roused the master. Such a time I hope never to live through again — Miss Vita, with her face set like stone, and Mr. Harold more quiet than I’ve ever known him. Worse, that was, than if he’d raged like Da when the drink’s on him. Miss Vita looked at the horse and Mr. Harold told Hayter he’d have to walk out with us in the morning, and look at the trap; and then he says to me, as I stand with my cap in my hand, Did you get a look at the car’s number?

  I shook my head.

  Pity, he says.

  But they was from London, I offer.

  They would be, he says.

  And turns away without another word.

  Monday, 7 April 1941

  It is certain now that no one answering to the Lady’s description took the first train Saturday morning from Staplehurst station, nor the last. No one like her has been seen in all the Weald, as far as Mr. Harold can make out. He’s asked the police and looked in at hospital. The telegraph has been fairly singing her name, and how she looked.

  The earth has swallowed her up.

  Today, Miss Vita is to visit the Lady’s sister at a place called Charleston, and then drive to her home which is a monk’s house. She has asked me to come and tell her people what I saw and know. When the trip is done Miss Vita will take me back to Knole — I am in disgrace. I am that sick with losing the Lady, and
losing my place, that I wish I were dead. I tried to help but did only harm. I cannot tell Miss Vita she feared to stay at Sissinghurst, for she wouldn’t understand and would probably be affronted. But she did not see the fear in the Lady’s eyes.

  To me Miss Vita says only You are a good fellow, Jock, and will be much missed; but your mother will be wanting you at home, to be sure. You are safer in such times with your family.

  I am not missed and I will not be safe.

  I will go for a soldier. Da will say it’s all I’m good for.

  MAYBE SHE IS ALL RIGHT AND GOT WHEREVER IT was she was anxious to go. Maybe we will find her sitting at home when Miss Vita drives down to Sussex. Maybe it is not my fault that everything went bad and the pony was put down and the gig chopped up for firewood. But I feel in my heart that it is all my fault. I live that time — the car coming round the curve in the dark, the horse screaming, the feel of the hedge as it came up to strike my cheek — over and over, whenever I shut my eyes. And the Lady, not speaking or looking, as they dragged her away.

  This bit of writing should be kept safe. For Mr. Harold, maybe, who might want it someday. I will set an angelic host around it. For the Lady.

  Jock Bellamy

  Chapter Forty-One

  “EXTRAORDINARY IS A WORD TOO OFTEN APPLIED TO items that pass through an auctioneer’s hands,” Marcus Symonds-Jones observed as he looked around the conference table in Imogen Cantwell’s office, “but in this case I would argue the term is merited. One such find would be notable — even if unattributed to an author. Two must be remarkable; but to have three related documents, two of them written by Virginia Woolf, is a discovery of the rarest order. When one considers the contribution the find provides to English history and literature — I think we may justly call it priceless.”

  “Priceless,” Gray Westlake repeated as he rocked precariously on one of the Head Gardener’s folding chairs. “That’s hardly the best choice of word, Marcus. Say priceless, and I walk out of here.”

  “I think it’s exactly the right word,” Jo countered. “I wouldn’t part with my grandfather’s diary for any amount of money. It’s too personal. And I want my grandmother to read it.”

  She had summoned Gray last night by phone while Peter contacted Marcus. The two men drove down to Kent together that morning in one of the Connaught’s black cars — wary, but incapable, in the final instance, of refusing temptation. Marcus greeted Peter as though he were a cross between Jesus Christ and a corpse He’d just revived; Jo suspected Marcus couldn’t decide whether to fire or promote him. Peter’s complete lack of interest in the outcome of the question added to his offense.

  FOR AT LEAST AN HOUR AFTER FINISHING THEIR PERUSAL OF Jock’s diary the previous evening, they’d sat talking around the same table in Imogen’s office.

  For a while, Jo simply listened to the others, her emotions brimming with the plunge into her grandfather’s past. It was painful to feel what he’d felt, to share his anxiety, to weigh the decisions he’d been forced to shoulder too soon. In the crabbed writing on the cigarette papers, Jock was a familiar stranger — not the hale old warrior she’d known, but a tentative and lonely boy, struggling to act like a man. He’d hated himself for failing the Lady that night on the London road; but how much worse must he have felt when Virginia’s body was finally pulled from the Ouse? The diary couldn’t tell Jo. But she understood that the death had scarred her grandfather beyond repair. He’d abandoned his work, his family, his life — and run away to war. Looking for a swift and violent end.

  “Are you okay, Jo?” Peter asked.

  She shook herself out of her reverie, smiled at him, and said, “What troubles me is that we still don’t know how Virginia died. Was she thrown, was she pushed? Or did she jump in despair?”

  “She was killed in the car accident,” Peter suggested, “and her body dumped off the bridge at Southease.”

  “She was brought back to Leonard,” Margaux said darkly, “who refused to waste a perfectly good death notice.”

  Jo shook her head. “I think she was silenced by the men of Westminster, who drove out to find her after getting Harold’s letter. They were clever enough to take her down to Sussex, where the world already thought she’d gone into the water.”

  “Harold and Vita knew otherwise,” Margaux objected.

  “Harold and Vita were in the midst of a war.” Peter toyed with his mug of tea. “The Double-Cross Committee — the German agents run by M15 — were a critical reason England defeated Hitler. Harold worked for the Ministry of Information; he knew far more about intelligence work than Virginia did. He may have weighed her loss against the fate of the country — and decided not to push things.”

  “That’s such a sexist statement,” Margaux said furiously. “I can’t believe you sometimes, Peter. You think it morally sound to sacrifice a genius — ”

  “Harold tried his best to save her.” Peter’s voice was mild. “When he failed, he could have got himself killed, too, by protesting too much. He decided instead to go on.”

  “ — Defending his Lime Walk and his English spring,” Jo murmured.

  “Aren’t you glad they’re still here?” Peter shrugged. “He’d sent the truth about Blunt and Burgess to Maynard Keynes; if nobody wanted to believe it — that was hardly Harold’s problem. He wasn’t the sort to expose his fellows.”

  “Lest they expose him,” Margaux shot back. “But murder?”

  “We’ll never know whether it was murder,” Peter reminded her gently.

  “We know,” Jo said.

  BEFORE THEY LEFT SISSINGHURST THAT NIGHT, PETER placed the cigarette papers, Leonard’s letter and book, and the biscuit tin in a plastic bag. Imogen sealed it with tape and they all signed it with a black marker; then she photographed the bundle and locked it in her office safe.

  “I can tell The Family I was in on the find with a straight face, now,” she said with exultant relief.

  MARCUS SYMONDS-JONES WAS LOOKING AT JO THIS MORNING as though she were a particularly recalcitrant child. “I don’t think, you know, that you’re in any position to make demands. Given your extraordinary behavior in recent days. The people at this table are all that stand between you and prosecution.”

  Jo smiled at him. “Did you learn that trick of intimidation from Gray? I suppose you’ll offer me a document to sign, now.”

  “As a matter of fact — ” Marcus lifted a sheet of paper from the agenda before him. “I have it here. You relinquish any claim to these items in exchange for a leniency I only hope we can guarantee. I have not yet consulted the Trust or the Nicolson Family — God knows what penalties they might enforce — but we will try to do our best by you, Miss Bellamy.”

  “How fortunate, then,” Peter interjected, “that we consulted The Family ourselves.”

  Marcus paused. He glanced at Gray, who was studying Peter with an interested expression.

  “That’s why we thought it best to meet here, in the garden, where the papers belong,” Peter added quietly. “The Family were delighted to learn from Imogen that she’d unearthed a number of treasures related to Sissinghurst and its more famous occupants; and they felt we might be interested in a final document that has come to light.” Peter paused, aware that the room had gone silent. “A poem, to be precise, written by Vita Sackville-West and found after her death.”

  “Where?” Margaux demanded. “In the Tower? I swear, there’s more bloody stuff up there than anybody realizes. The Trust just sits on it.”

  “The Family, not the Trust, found this particular poem — and to them, it was inexplicable. But they kept it safe.”

  “Inexplicable?” Gray repeated. “In what way?”

  “In the way that any piece of a puzzle is meaningless without the rest. The poem is entitled ‘In Memoriam: White Garden.’ It’s dated April 1941.”

  “That’s when she published her Woolf poem,” Margaux exclaimed.

  “Spot on,” Peter agreed. “Vita wrote ‘In Memoriam: Virginia
Woolf’ for the London Observer that April. This poem — the one found in the Tower — would appear to be a companion to it. A more intimate lament, if you will, that she suppressed. Dr. Strand, can you recall any of the published poem?”

  Margaux pursed her lips and closed her eyes, lost in thought for a few seconds. Then she intoned: “So let us say, she loved the water-meadows, / The Downs; her friends; her books; her memories; / The room which was her own. / London by twilight; shops and Mrs. Brown; / Donne’s church; the Strand; the buses, and the large / Smell of humanity that passed her by…” Margaux’s eyes drifted open. “Vita goes on to compare Virginia to a moth, fluttering against a lamp. And then she closes with:

  How small, how petty seemed the little men / Measured against her scornful quality.

  We feminists love to quote that bit.”

  “What do you think of it? As poetry, I mean?”

  “Not entirely successful.” Margaux was enjoying her moment on the stage. “Vita seemed torn between a private tribute and a public one, the need to mourn her friend and the need to ensure Virginia’s place in the English canon. That tension’s evident in the verse — ”

  Marcus shifted irritably in his seat. “Yes, yes, all very delightful I’m sure — but to what does this chatter tend?”

  Peter drew what appeared to be a simple sheet of writing paper from a manila envelope and placed it gently in the middle of the table.

  In Memoriam: White Garden

  I said she was a moth, fluttered spirit, delicate;

  That bumped against the lamp of life. No mention made

  Of how they tortured her, prey to nameless fears,

  With such exact descriptions of the night:

  Its quality, deception, unnumbered shades of grey

  Crept in to suffocate the plangent souls she loved.

  The glow of blanchèd flowers and pale birds

  Her sole security for sleep.