O Virginia, whose cobweb fingers trailed
Among our thorns, jabbering in tongues and fractured
Semaphore, your madness is a comfort to us now.
What sense you made of bowler hats and bombing runs,
The water meadows drown; it will not stand for long
against the ministry of lies, the soporific song
we mutter in our darkened rooms, mere lullabies
before the final sleep.
I told you not to meddle. Not to worry your poor head.
I should have held you up as sane
Before the men, instead.
Fatuity, indifference; a bitter, soul-deep blight —
A weariness with war and bombs
And blackout shades pulled tight.
And when I paid attention —
You had slipped off, in the night.
White clematis, white lavender, anemone and rose
The lists go on and on, my dear, remorse that barely shows.
I’ve planted you a garden here, against the pitchy black;
Pure white, my virginal, my owl; pure white,
Now just — Come back —
“It’s an apology,” Jo murmured, “and a farewell. Isn’t it, Peter?”
“The Family tell me they would like this poem included with the other documents — the notebook, Leonard Woolf’s bound volume, the cigarette papers. Their preference is that these finds remain in England, in an archival setting, and they’re hopeful of consulting, through the Trust, the curators of Monk’s House to reach an equitable solution for all parties concerned.”
“Excellent,” Marcus managed, with a visible effort at recovery. He tore at the cap of his Montblanc pen. “Just give me the best contact number, won’t you, and I’ll take it from here?”
“I’ve been empowered to act as broker between The Family, the Trust, and the University of Sussex,” Peter continued inexorably. “The bulk of the Woolf papers are housed at Sussex, you see. The Family is desirous of placing these items with the rest of the Woolf collection, so that scholars” — he inclined his head toward Margaux — “might have the greatest ease of access. They’ve offered the notebook to the University at an exceptionally decent price, and the University is considering the acquisition. Jo Bellamy has agreed to lend her grandfather’s papers for an indefinite period of time.”
“Scholars?” Margaux repeated. “That’s not what I stipulated. I was promised sole access!”
“We have documents, Peter!” Marcus spluttered. “Signed.”
“ — By no one with any real authority in the case, unfortunately. But don’t piss your drawers, Marcus — you’re not out of it altogether. I have here a letter” — Peter resorted once more to his manila envelope — “signed by representatives of both the Trust and The Family, requesting the completion of Sotheby’s in-house notebook analysis and the return of the materials to Sissinghurst. The auction house will, of course, be paid for those services — out of the proceeds of our private sale.”
There was a breathless silence as Marcus scanned Peter’s letter. Then he tossed it on the table in disgust. “Bugger.”
“As I said — you were set up.” Gray rose from the table. “Jo, send me your accounting and any drawings you’ve got, once you’re back home. With the holidays coming, Alicia’s time is tight — but maybe in January you can meet us in Manhattan to discuss the plant list.”
“That’d be great,” she replied.
“Now, if you’ll excuse me” — Gray inclined his head at Imogen Cantwell — “my plane is waiting at Gatwick. Marcus, you’ll catch a train back to London, of course?”
The door closed soundlessly behind him.
“You nasty, underhanded, backstabbing sod.” Marcus made a show of gathering his papers and agenda, pique in every movement. “I’ll see you sacked!”
“But first,” Peter said, “you’ll tell me where the notebook is. With Beevers in Watermark, or Finegold in Bindings?”
“Beevers,” Marcus spat.
“Right, then.” Peter smiled all around. “I’ll just give him a call. Margaux — you might want to share Marcus’s taxi to Staplehurst. There are trains on the hour. Imogen, you’ve been more than generous — but may I beg the use of your phone? My mobile battery’s quite dead, I’m afraid. Jo — I shan’t be a moment. Wait for me, will you?”
SHE LEFT IMOGEN TO SET HER PERPETUAL KETTLE TO BOIL, and walked out into the garden. It was barely ten o’clock, a full hour before the gates of Sissinghurst would open; Paradise was left to herself.
Tomorrow was Saturday, the last Open day of the year. By Monday the castle grounds would be dead quiet, a few shadows dancing against the pale green panes of the propagation houses, a few barrows trundling down the slate paths. Mist, curling at the foot of Vita’s tower. An angelic host. But by Monday Jo would be back in Delaware.
She paced slowly up from the Powys Wall through the Rose Garden fading now into dormancy; through the heart of the massive Yew Rondel, to the cross path that led through the opening in a brick wall, past leafless magnolias and a tool shed, into the Yew Walk.
Severe simplicity. Restraint. A vanishing point that beckoned.
She had never strolled entirely alone between these green walls. The fragrant yew seemed to whisper in the morning mist: Come back. Come back. Or was it Virginia they called?
The entrance to the Lower Courtyard opened on her left. She glanced at the steps spilling down from the Tower, the sweep of lawn and the bare bones of clematis, and walked on.
Her heart, she found, beat faster as she turned for the last time into the White Garden. As though a specter awaited her there. She would always look for Jock, now, in the shadows beneath the arching roses.
She stopped short, her gaze drifting past the arbor and its fading canes to the wrought-iron gate beyond. Jock had never seen this, though he’d been part of its dreaming. What had he feared, when he learned she was coming to Sissinghurst? That the careful web of lies he’d upheld for six decades in silence — the myth of Virginia Woolf’s suicide — would explode in his face? Publicity? Flashbulbs? Accusation? The loss of the fragile peace he’d found among his tools in the Delaware Valley?
He’d been the only one of Sissinghurst’s ghosts still left alive. The only one the world could interrogate. The one who faulted himself most for failing the Lady. And so he’d made his choice, Jo thought: to go silently into that great good night, rather than face the endless questions. She understood, now, that his choice had never had anything to do with her. It was no failure of love, no unanswerable reproach. It was Jock’s bow to an obscure past he’d hoped would remain buried.
“Grandpa,” she whispered as she turned into the path that led to the Little Virgin, past the mottled silver of eryngium and crambe, “I’m sorry for all your pain. I think for a while now I’ve shared it. But I’m telling you, my dearest: You did your best. You tried your hardest. And you’ve taught me that’s all any of us can do.”
“Are you really going Sunday?” Peter said quietly behind her.
She turned. “That’s what my ticket says. Did he fire you?”
“I gave a month’s notice. I want to be around until the Woolf papers are safely housed; I don’t trust Marcus. Four more weeks of indentured servitude on behalf of a good cause — and I’m free. Here.” He pressed a sheaf of papers into her hands. “I made that for you. A photocopy of Jock’s cigarette papers. So your gran can read them. Imogen let me borrow her copier.”
“I’m…” She looked up at him shyly. “So grateful to you, Peter. For everything.”
“Don’t be. I owe you a good deal more — the commission for this bit of work, for instance. I’ve got plans for the cash.”
“Do you?” she said, slipping her hand through his arm. “Would they happen to include buying me lunch?”
“’Fraid not,” he said regretfully. “I’m promised to Margaux. We’re to discuss our future, you see.”
“Oh.” She faltered. “No, actually, I don�
��t see. Or maybe I hoped… but it’s okay. I understand. I really do. She’s… a remarkable woman, Peter.”
“She’s a virago,” he said cheerfully, throwing his arm around Jo and steering her back down the path. “And don’t tell me, in your endearing American way, that you’re a Gemini yourself. Margaux’s a screaming vulture, and I want nothing more to do with her in my life.”
“I’m so glad,” Jo whispered into his sweater.
“You haven’t asked me what I’m doing with my cash.”
“Opening Peter’s Place?”
“Could do. But first I intend to have a bang-up Christmas. You’ve never seen Sissinghurst in the snow. Neither have I. But I’m thinking the village needs a good Michelin two-star. With an organic potager. We might hunt for a property together.”
Her steps slowed. She looked up at him.
Peter was studying her as though she were a piece of vellum or an illuminated page; something authentic he was afraid to touch.
“We might do almost anything at all,” he said, “and I’d be happy. Go out, stay in. Eat. Drink. Make love — ”
And as he took her in his arms, the great ghostly barn owl — Life! Life! Life! — dipped its wings over the Little Virgin, and soared away over the White Garden.
A note from the Author
LAWRENCE BLOCK ONCE FAMOUSLY SAID THAT fiction writing is nothing more than “telling lies for fun and profit.” I have a habit of making things up, quite often about people who lived perfectly good lives of their own, people who would be furious to think they were the objects of my embellishment — Jane Austen, Queen Victoria, Virginia Woolf. But then these people, whose every word and act already seemed part of the public domain, died. And my imagination had its way with them.
The White Garden is a case in point. The idea for it took hold during a particularly bleak period in my life when I seemed to be writing only about death and violence. People I loved were dying, too. My mother began her slow descent into the terrible losses of Alzheimer’s disease — she remained present, but increasingly unrecognizable. One night, her old self came to me in a dream, as it often does, and my aunt — a horticulture judge who loved gardens — was with her. My aunt had been gone for years, but the two of them were arm in arm, companionable and chatty as always, and they were intending to walk around Sissinghurst. Come out into the garden, Francie, they said; and so I followed them into the White Garden.
There’s something restorative in writing about growing things when the world is dying around you. I imagine that Vita Sackville-West understood this, and that it is one of the reasons she survived so many upheavals — and perhaps a reason that Virginia Woolf could not. In thinking about these two women, and their relationship to such things as words, and flowers, and violence, I was riveted by a singular moment in their long mutual friendship — the moment it was broken forever, the moment they literally fell out of touch on the banks of the River Ouse. The three weeks that elapsed between Virginia Woolf’s disappearance and the discovery of her body must have been difficult ones for everyone who loved her, Vita in particular. That period of silence, of unknowing, was tantalizing to me; I began to consider an alternative in which things were different, the inversion of what history believes to be true.
The White Garden is fiction, all the same. I hope its readers will enjoy exploring the possibilities it suggests, and forgive its inevitable license.
Anyone wishing to learn more about Sissinghurst should immediately obtain a copy of Adam Nicolson’s book by that name (Sissinghurst, HarperCollins U.K., 2008), the most heartfelt, poignant, and lyric tribute to home that anyone could possibly write.
Francine Mathews
aka Stephanie Barron
Denver, Colorado
July 29, 2009
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The White Garden: A Novel of Virginia Woolf Page 26